Ben McDonald shares his story. 

As a fresh faced teenager (well actually a bit spotty), I walked into Dell as a trainee direct from leaving school and I was faced with this amazing piece of technology sitting on my desk, a shiny new Dell 486P desktop computer.

Now back in the day I had a Commodore 64, and a Spectrum that my brother and I used to play games on, I especially remember waiting for the tape games to load, listening to all the funny noises it used to make during the process.

Most of the time the game did load, but sometimes it did not and you would have to start all over again! Those were the "Out Run" days, which was one of my favorite games at the time.

Other than playing games, and just before I left high school I had an electronic typewriter, which had a tiny LCD screen on it which was pretty cool. You could type the line you wanted to print on the LCD screen first, edit it and then at a press of a button the machine would type the whole line in one go.

That was very hi-tech for me at the time, as my folks were not in the position to be able to buy me any form of a real PC.

That typewriter helped me write a letter to my school informing them that I had been offered a job at a company called Dell, and that I would not be joining them at what they called "Sixth Form", a form of higher education.

So can you image when I saw this hi-tech desktop PC on my desk walking into Dell for the first time, I was blown away!

I was also using this pretty amazing operating system called Windows 3.1, and a mouse! Something that my Dad used to call a "magic mouse".

All that my Mum and Dad knew about "Dell" at the time, was the very popular and now iconic sitcom "Only Fools and Horses". It was just a matter of time until I was called "Del Boy" after the character Derek Trotter from the show.

It was also the time that my proud Mum starting telling everybody about my new job, and that I was "in computers", now she says I am "in marketing".

Now back to that shiny new 486P that was sitting on my desk, wow what a machine! it was gleaming white (well slightly off white), with a nice metal chassis that was supporting a pretty nice 15" CRT monitor, which was also pretty snazzy at the time.

So what am I using now to write this, a pretty nice 12" laptop. :-)

What was your first PC?

My First PC - Dell 486P - 1992 - What was Yours?