My computer history: from Texas Instruments and Toshiba to Ideapad and MacBook Pro

History of My Computers

A personal inventory, from TI-99/4A to MacBook

At some point, I realised that I have owned more computers than I could easily remember. Not because I collect them, but because they have quietly accompanied different phases of my life: learning, working, travelling, writing.

I felt like making a nerdy list. The computers I have owned. A history.

BTW also worked with DEC 10, VAX, ICL mainframe – VME, IBM mainframe – System 390 and beyond, Solaris, Aix.

Early Encounters

Texas Instruments TI-99/4A

Talks BASIC. Peek and Poke to move you directly into its memory.

Toshiba MSX computer HX-10AA

Running the failed MSX operating system standard. You could already do a lot more with it.

The PC era

Entering the world of the wonderful 5¼-inch floopy disk, after the horror of using cassettes with the home computers.

Tulip PC compatible

Yes Tulip was a Dutch brand making computers. We did computers in the Netherlands. Philips has made computers, but missed a boat. Tulip was a nice brand, and worth a rabbit-hole but not now, just one mention: it bought the Commodore computer brand in 1997.

IBM PS2

Unimaginative bulky thing. Dialed into the Internet with it for the first time. Via Compuserve. Forums were the big thing (in nerd world, that is). Email. DOOM.

Portables (sort of)

IBM Thinkpad 500

My first portable, in quotes. The thing weighed a ton. Literally a brick.

IBM Thinkpad T20, T30, T41

All very good and enormously robust laptops. Great trackpoint thing to move the screen pointer. Missing that today still.

Lenovo T410

After IBM sold the PC division to Lenovo, switched to that brand.

Apple years

Apple MacBook 2009

This was my first MacBook. Only then did I notice that the Mac user experience was so incredibly better than that of Windows. It also boots within 10 seconds, whereas my Windows machines always take over a minute or even (much) longer.

Apple Macbook Pro 2013

By far the best of them all. Still performs top notch. Indestructible.

Lenovo Ideapad 510

Becoming a freelancer, I needed a Windows machine.

This is a plastic device. Poor touchpad. But then again, it is by far the cheapest on the list.

HP EliteBook 1040 G3

Pretty robust and comfortable. But not at the Lenovo level with comparable models.

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MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020)

With touch bar. Could have left that out from me. Steve Jobs said correctly that people don’t know what they want, but the touch bar is definitely not what I want.

Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro

Nice machine. If it had the track point I had on the IBM T40 and follow-on models, I would be happier. The touchpad is ok, but not at the Mac level.

Update 2025: still working on a Lenovo Ideapad, and the MacBook. The gap between macOS and Windows is narrowing. I have some old laptops running Linux, which is doable but only because I am a techie. I think my next machine will be a Framework. We should be able to repair our stuff.