This is a short history of the computers I worked with, and how I named them. It is mostly to myself, so I don’t tag it.
The old days: PCs
The first PC we had was a 33 MHz 486 Intel with a 15" Monitor – an awesome machine at the time with Windows 3.1 on it. It even had a CD drive! I mostly used Paintbrush and played games like Commander Keen, Monkey Island 1 and 2, Sam & Max, and Secret Agent. I even programmed with QBasic under DOS. This is where I learned to program.
The I got my own PC: a 266 MHz AMD K III, with 64MB RAM if I remember correctly. It had Windows 95 I suppose. Having become an AMD fan, my next one was a 500 MHz Athlon, maybe with 256 MB. I guess my oldest HD is still in use, in Hikari.
Then I bought an Athlon 2200+ machine with 512 MB which I gave to my aunt (for free) now. It was called Seras.
Today: Macs
My first notebook was a very nice Sony Vaio which I called “Chihiro”. You can see I was an anime fan already. It had a 2 GHz Pentium 4. I used it throughout my first 4 semesters and took it everywhere. But I grew out of it, the CD drive broke, and I was happy to give it to somebody else (for free, again). After reinstalling I called it “Motoko” and gave it away.
Of course, I already had a replacement: my first MacBook, 1,83 GHz Core Duo, 1GB RAM (the default configuration was only 512 KB!) – Henrietta. The hard drive died :( but they managed to restore my data and I revived her as Rico. What a machine! My first software project for Transformal wouldn’t have been possible without her. MacBooks rock for software – and I even played Diablo2 with it. She’s still with me, but I figured I need more speed, more space, and a real 64 bit CPU.
So I bought a second MacBook, about the best one you can get, 2,4 GHz model with 4GB RAM, and called her Triella. She is currently my working machine, and I’m typing this article with her. Her Windows XP alter ego is called Igor. I really love my Triella!
In addition, I bought Simon’s old 24" Mac since he bough a new one, and I called it Batou. He also gave me his Airport Extreme, which I called OC Pupsen (German for “farting”), and it is serving my WLAN networt called Muffincore.
And I bought one of the first iPhones, a week after it came out in Germany – the cheaper 8GB model, of course. It’s called Isako. 2G, no GPS, but still – it is my iPod, my cell phone, my toy, my city and world map, my calendar, my time table, my portable drive (with viewer), my fancy equipment, world clock, my stop watch, my calculator, my flashlight, my camery, my newspaper, my contacts, my mirror, even my spirit level. My little computer. Isako lives in my back pocket. Since I use it as my alarm clock, it is the first and last thing I’m using on a typical day.
