How old is your computer

[sin2beta]

I kinda wonder how old people's computers are on a retro game site. I could see two forces taking hold:

1) The gamer: Needs a new powerful machine.

2) The retro: Enjoys getting the most out of old tech.

Anyways, I got curious about what people are running.

I'm running a macbook 2007 model. It's a 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 gigs of RAM and a now small 120 GB Hard Drive (I have a 1 TB as an external though). It's still trucking along and I actually do not see replacing it anytime soon. I actually would like to use it as a primary machine until 2017.

Anyways, I delight in making old machines last way longer than they should. I definitely fall into the retro category. Even though a 6 year old computer is not old yet.

[pacpix]

We have a HP desktop as the family computer, and last year I saved up money too buy myself a laptop when I became a MineCrack addict.  At my dad's work I found an old Compaq that once I find all the cords I will be taking it home.  Im thinking it has a version of DOS on it or Windows 95.  I do not know a whole lot about old computers, but I find them fascinating.  My Windows 7 start up sound is the Windows 98 one!  I also think that viruses on DOS and early Windows are pretty cool; http://www.youtube.com/danooct1 tests a lot of them on his channel.

tl;dr
I have a HP laptop and I like Windows 98 and DOS

[foxhack]

I bought the -base- system off a guy in GameTZ in 2008 after my second computer burned up on me.

Yes, really.

It's an Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition 2.6Ghz 65W CPU. It ha 512 MB of RAM at the time (currently 3 GB), and no video card. I ended up adding more RAM, various video cards, hard drives, etc.

I've been trying to upgrade this sucker for three years. Still haven't been able to raise the cash...

[htimreimer]

unfortunately i share a laptop with my mom and the worst about it is that she bought it from MDG, now for those who don't know MDG is well known for using refurbished parts in all of there computers and laptops also with MDG you are locked into a contract that says you have pay them every month for the next 4 to 9 years. we got it last year and nothing has broken down yet.

i just bought my self a computer from 1997 for 20 dollars at a thrift shop, most of collection are old pc games from the 90s, so its gonna come in handy

[jobocan]

Bought this computer 2 years ago I think. I did upgrade the video card because the one it came with was trash. And the power supply (though it's a cheap one) because I couldn't hook up my video card to the previous one. It's a pre-built HP machine.

AMD Phenom II X6 2.9 GHz, 12 GB of RAM, AMD Radeon HD 7870. Not a huge powerhouse, but able to play any game at almost the highest setting (though PhysX stuff slows it down).

[scott]

I got my PC in '08. It's a Dell XPS 630.

Core2 Duo 6MB,2.83GHz. 4GB Ram with a GeForce 8800 GT. It could play anything I wanted it to. But right now it's giving me fits and I can't play anything on it.

[darko]

I think my Macbook Pro is from 2010. It's held in there but I'm ready for a change. My desktop is pretty old - a custom build I put together in 2008. It's actually out of commission at the moment for an unknown reason. I don't really need it at all, so it just sits in my office and collects dust. It was basically as good as it could be when I built it so when it's working, it handles everything but the newest games. Since I don't really play any games on the PC, I've never really upgraded it (other than adding another graphics card a few years ago to run in SLI).

I'm actually looking for a new laptop now. I'm really wanting a windows 7 machine with a 13" screen that's thin and easy to carry around. I've been using mac laptops since 2002 and have no issues with them - I'm just wanting a change!

[kimimi]

My laptop's a couple of years old now but it's not a bad one - i7 2630QM @ 2.0GHz (up to 2.9), Nvidia 540M and 8GB of RAM. I also have a good-but-old IBM ThinkPad with XP on it that I use for WoW with hubby and any older PC games that don't work, or don't work properly, on Windows 7.

[atariboy]

My main system has Windows 7 Ultimate and is a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Processor 5400+ 2.80 GHz with a NVIDIA GeForce 9400 GT. My Retro computer that I Got for $5 from a yard sale has a AMD Athlon 1250 with 240MB RAM and has Windows 98SE installed on it. Oh! and a Commodore 64 

[thomascozine]

Currently have a Dell Inspiron 620 with an Intel Core i5-2320 CPU, 6.00 GB RAM, running Windows 7. Not much, but gets the job done thus far.

I, also, have almost every computer I've ever used growing up. But getting them to work is another story.

[burningdoom]

I just had to replace my PC last year. So it's under a year old, with Windows 8. BTW, Windows 8 freaking sucks if you're a classic gamer. It's incompatible with sooooo much.

[varkias]

I just recently upgraded, I do so about every 2 years.

Core i5 3570K Ivy
16 GB DDR3 1600 memory
Nvidia 560 Ti
ASRock Z77 Mobo
Samsung 840 Pro 128GB SSD

Now It's time to replace my monitor...
I'm also keeping an eye out for an Amiga, I had one back in 1995 and foolishly sold it.

[dstone]

I've been rocking my laptop for around six years now. It's a Dell Latitude D830, Core2Duo (don't remember how fast) with 4GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive. I realized that it couldn't really handle editing HD video after I purchased my new camera so I built a new desktop in June of last year.

Windows 7 Professional,
Dual processor Intel Xeon 2.4GHz (gives me 12 physical cores and 24 virtual cores)
48GB RAM
Dual 1TB 10,000RPM hard drives in a RAID-0 array
Dual Blu-Ray burners
Dual GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics cards in SLI connected to a Matrox TripleHead2Go adapter running three displays.

So far it's been able to handle everything I've thrown at it. One of the production companies I work with liked it so much they had me build a similar machine for them (although it had 16 cores at 3.2GHz (32 virtual), 64GB RAM and an additional 12TB storage array).

I have a small stash of retro PCs for everything else. Atari 800XL, Atari 520STfm, Commodore VIC-20, Commodore 64, Amiga 500, IBM PCjr, Apple IIgs, Mac Classic, an old Quadra and a Gateway 486 with Windows 3.1. I think there's a 386 creeping around somewhere, too. Oh, and then there's the shell of a Cray Y-MP EL98 supercomputer that I'd like to build a render farm in some day.

[madmax]

I am mainly a PC gamer. I love retro gaming a lot but I am fascinated by the progress the gaming industry is doing as well.

Intel Core i7-3770K @ 4.5 GHz
Corsair H80
ASUS P8Z77-V Pro
Evga 680 SC Signature (Main monitor and TV when I need the TV)
EVGA 460 1GB (2 side monitors)
Corsair Vengence 16GB RAM
OCZ 120 GB Vertex 3
OCZ 120 GB Vertex 4
1TB Western Digital

[blipcs76]

I have two PCs in my house, neither of which are used for gaming.  I was a PC gamer in the mid 90's, but soon went back to consoles.

My office PC is my work machine for doing web and graphic design freelance, video editing, etc.  It's a 2008 model Gateway running Vista, an AMD quad-core, 8GB DDR2 ram, and 2.75TB of storage.  750MB on the C: drive and 2TB on my media storage drive.  It also fills the role of media server for our home, where we store TV shows, movies, music, etc.

Our HTPC is in the living room and serves as our entertainment center.  We ditched cable 3 years ago and went all streaming for our entertainment.  This machine is a Dell Zino HD.  Nothing fancy in the specs department, Windows 7, but it does what we need it to do.  We use it to run XBMC to access our media server, and Windows Media Center serves as our DVR to record over-the-air TV.  We added a wireless keyboard with built-in trackball, so we can browse the web from our couch too.  We love this setup far more than what we had with cable.

And by dropping cable we've saved about $3,000 since we went to this system and honestly, we prefer it.  Cable was replaced by Netflix, Hulu and other streaming sources like YouTube and Revision3.