I got my first computer in fifth grade. I was so hyped, even though it was a low-end vista computer. About the worst ‘new’ computer from the price range, the thing had a lot of problems. I loved it though, and clocked so many hours, I burned out the Power Supply unit, twice. It was always on, always running some program or another. But mostly chrome, and mostly on free flash game sites. I spent my days playing Feudalism 2, Thing Thing arena, and Age of War. I eventually found a free game called Combat Arms, that I played non-stop throughout middle school. Hours and hours, probably close to a thousand. I eventually decided video games were hard, and I just didn’t have the skill. Going into high school, I decided I needed a laptop. In comes mistake two, my Alienware. A once powerful and respected company, until it was bought out by Dell, making it my second Dell. The first was underpowered with a horrid OS, the second overpriced. But it worked. Through High
In comes mistake two, my Alienware. A once powerful and respected company, until it was bought out by Dell, making it my second Dell. The first was underpowered with a horrid OS, the second overpriced. But it worked. Through High School I taught myself to program, then learned some ten or so new programming languages. I had two internships on this laptop, and by the time it died, the hard drive was shot, and the fans had all but burned up. It was at this point I began making plans for the future.
It was at this point I began making plans for college. I decided I wanted to build a desktop, and have a light laptop I could carry around with me to classes. I settled on an HP, a slip stylish laptop that flips into a tablet. This laptop was fairly expensive, but I had a year of High School left when I was deciding on it, and decided I needed at least some power. I knew I wasn’t going to build my desktop until I was in college, so I needed a laptop to get me that far. This wasn’t the worst choice, but it was a fairly expensive one.
Cut to today, I just recently bought the laptop pictured above. It is a Lenovo Thinkpad x200 Tablet. It is a brick of a computer, and has a pen-enabled touchscreen. It is great for taking notes, even though it is a bit underpowered for pretty much any program today. It is still my favorite laptop (for the moment). I also bought a T61 ThinkPad, a traditional laptop (though also underpowered). Both were purchased from eBay, used. I decided to purchase them because I wanted to mess around with Linux, and bricking my current laptop was not a good idea. These were inexpensive, and really cool. So far, I have installed Linux 6 times on my x200; Mostly because I screwed up the first four. I then figured out that OSU internet is complicated, requiring complex wifi security (in addition to proprietary drivers for my laptop), and in order to use the ethernet, you have to register the computers MAC address. This is found through your Operating system (OS). To summarize, I needed ethernet to install the OS, and I needed an operating system to use the ethernet. This meant I had to install a temporary OS, find and register the MAC address, and then install the rest of the OS. Anyways, long story short, I had a lot of fun with Linux and my new computer.
Anyways, long story short, I had a lot of fun with Linux and my new computer. This sort of process is one oft repeated throughout my life (Research, Obtain, Research, Make mistakes, Research, and Fix mistakes). My computers, typewriters, 3D Printer, knives, lighters, adding machines, and calculators all share this story; you name it I have probably messed up one or two. But messing them up is really half the fun! This is the main reason I decided to be an engineer, the research, mistakes and errors ultimatly all lead to the satisfaction of the final product.