This Saturday I installed Ubuntu Linux on my mother’s old laptop, a Dell Vostro Intel Core i3 with 4GB from I don’t know what year, I think 2013. The installation was a breeze, using balenaEtcher to write an image to a USB stick.
Now to see what I will do with it. Host a website that I program all by myself in Django/Python?
Ubuntu means as much as being open to others, devoting yourself to others, showing compassion and respect.
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.
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.
T20
Lenovo T410
After IBM sold the PC division to Lenovo, switched to that brand.
Lenovo T410
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.
MacBook Pro 2013 15″
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.
.
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.
MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020)
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.
