I remember my first computer purchase like it was yesterday.  In the early 90's I was a young airman in the USAF stationed at McChord AFB in Tacoma WA.  America Online was just starting up and several of my buddies at work had home computers.  I just had to get one, it seemed like so much fun!  Back then they came pre-loaded with tons of software to use, or at least you thought you'd use.  I asked some of my friends what I should look at buying.  Everyone had their favorite brand it seemed, even though they all did the same thing more or less.  One fellow airman told me "You'll never need more than a 750MB hardrive."  That line still sticks with me to this day.

I ended up purchasing a Apple Computer for its ease of use.  it was a Macintosh Performa 6300, and oh my god was it LOADED for that time.

It came with a blazing fast 100 MHz PowerPC 603e chip. A whopping 16MB of ram, and get this... a 1.2 GB hardrive.  Throw in a Apple 15" monitor, bubble jet printer,  Mac OS 7.5.1 and you were off and flying!  Well, kinda....

I'm glad I made that purchase back in 1996.  It was an unbelievable $3500 for the bundle, but it led me to where I am today.

Since then I freelanced for the original online Mac Magazine "Mymac.com", self taught myself HTML, became very active in the online Star Wars community and am now Content Manger for the number one Star Wars fansite worldwide, TheForce.net.

I've gone through many computers since my original Macintosh Performa.  Mostly cheap windows boxes from various industry leaders.  I've tried Dell, HP, Compaq, Microcenter's in house brand.  All of them running various versions of Microsoft's software over the years.  I tried Vista, but had to go back to XP and now I have even more issues than before.  I'm just tired of working on the machine I'm supposed to be having fun on.

I've never really been as happy as I was on that Mac though and I think it's time to make the jump back. Next year I plan to upgrade my entire house to Apple products.  I'm going to get the Apple TV, two macbooks, and the Time Capsule.  It never hurts to try something "different".