Let's remember how "stupid" or "noobish" WE were when we started use any computer device. As for me i got computer only at highschool age so it won't be anything exciting since by that time people start think before do stuff but yes before that we had DOS laptop for very short time with Norton Commander and i browsed to AntiVirus folder and though it is like medicine for computers. Also i remember i copied some game shortcuts from mothers work in floppy then brought to home to realize they don't work that way. I guess if we consider consoles(NES for example on Dandy) computers too aside from calculators then they would be first contact for me and since games require you to think to advance next level i guess that is why i don't have any too stupid stories.

I remember my first time...1999 Win98.....there was a button to push on the computer...that must turn it on...sure enough, it did. I played around for hours, clicking on everything and exploring and experimenting....then it was time to go to bed. Hmmm...no "off" button....so I immediately thought "Try the opposite of what is logical", and clicked on the "On" button [EDIT: I meant "Start"- been so long since I used Win-D'ohs, I forgot what it was called!]...and there was the option to shut down! I knew from that point on, that I'd get along well with computers...but it wasn't until 2010 when I switched to Linux that I started to enjoy them.

It was in high school. An HP mainframe, we used a 300 baud acoustic coupled MODEM connected to a teletype machine.

apple II 's in high school in the 80`s
Amigas were fun
vic 20's and commodore 64's with 128 and 256 k ram ( hand made cards )
a trs80- hand held in 1990

Apple IIe in first grade.

Commodore 64 in the early '80s, but I didn't do much with it and eventually gave it to my daughter.

Then a DOS class in the late '80s when the cat's meow was an IBM-compatible with two floppy drives and the only employees at my company who had computers, aside from the systems folks, were secretaries.

Then a 286 I scrounged at work. That's when I started to really learn DOS.

The first computer I owned for home use was a Tandy 386 with DOS 5.x, Windows 3.1, and an 80 gigs of HDD which I double-spaced, and a 2400 baud modem.

my first exposure to computers was an ibm pc/xt with a 5.25 inch hard drive
then apple IIs at school (one of my first experiences with programming a computer was to write so called 'time bomb' programs on the apple II that after a delay would cause the computer to beep endlessly, fun fun.

Sinclair ZX81 around 1984 and soon after that ZX Spectrum.

Wrote about it in the first exciting ( ) episode of my LQ blog.

Yeah. We had a cigarette afterwards.

The first I ever had access to was a CP/M thing with 8-inch floppy disks. Anyone remember how to use pip?

The first I ever had all to myself was the IBM PC of 1981, with a deluxe configuration: 2 floppies, colour monitor, 512KB RAM, 10MB HD (in a separate box — no room in the piza case!), and dot-matrix printer. And I had a whole shelf of manuals to read. GWBasic, Wordstar, Lotus123, DBase, backing up on floppies ... I don't think I want to go back!

On the one hand, I wish I'd developed an interest in computers a lot earlier than I did.
On the other, I think I am lucky that I only had about a couple of years with Windows before I discovered Linux, not enough time to get brainwashed into doing things "the Windows way".

It was 1969, and "personal" computers would not be invented for another ten years. I was in elementary school, thumbing the Ci-Cz volume of World Book Encyclopedia until, to this very day, it opens on its own accord to those pages.

Years later, BYTE Magazine came out and I pored over every issue, getting most of my practical know-how from "Professor (Carl) Helmers." I still have a copy of the Popular Electronics (or was it Radio-Electronics?) that described the first personal computer, based on the Intel 8008. (As in, "eight thousand eight," not "eighty.") I coveted the thing, but it would not be for another forty years that I found a way to get my hands on one.

While I sincerely appreciate those of you who "grew up with (personal) computers," I also know that I just can't quite explain to you how ... "you missed it."

It was the most "interesting times," with magazines like Creative Computing, and when the title of a certain magazine was, quite unabashedly, Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia. And nobody thought anything of it. Some of the most brilliant people I ever met were in my high school.

It happened. Once. And I don't think it will ever happen again.

This is one of the reasons why I always wanted to be born 20-25 years earlier. When things that matter were happening I wasn't born yet or was too young to remember/experience them.

My first experience was a commodore 64 - putting audio cassette tapes in to play golf, and an airplane game... jezzball jazz rabbit I think with a cartridge..? Idk, I was very young... I wish I could say we had a smoke when I was done...