Wow I feel so old.
But since we have migrated to this topic, my 2nd PC was an 8086. My first was a *** Smith System 80. It was a competitor to the (presumably Tandy TRS80) that X was talking about.
I still have a few 300 baud Acoustic modems which used to connect a pair of mainframes between Brisbane and Sydney. Operators would establish a phone call and then place the handset onto the modems and close the lid. That wasn't many years ago.
However what I find really amazing is the state of technology today in contrast.
The systems I work on will have dedicated 10 Gigabit links between Houston, London and Kuala Lumper next year, and in terms of CPU - the newest system has over 18000 of them. Matched to 72TB of main memory and about 2.4 Exabytes of disk. It will most likely be twice that size by the end of the year. I can't imagine what we will be using in another 20 years or so, the rate of improvement has not slowed down in the slightest from those very first computers.
By the way back on topic, I think the ipad is great - I broke down and bought one about 6 weeks ago.
