Weekend Open Forum: How many computers do you own?

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,240   +192
Staff member

I can vividly remember wanting a computer for several years before I actually received my first one, a lovely AMD K6-2 333MHz beast (or so I thought) as a Christmas gift way back in 1998. I was always fascinated with technology and wanted to learn more about it but my parents weren’t able to make it happen financially until I reached high school.

Here I sit nearly 14 years later and it’s amazing how times have changed. Few could have predicted the overwhelming success of the Internet and how technology in general would be injected into every aspect of daily life.

A PC was once considered a luxury item but in the world we live today, it’s becoming closer to a necessity with many people owning several computers. I can’t help but think back to one of my favorite movies, Back to the Future, when Marty McFly tells his mother and grandparents (in the past) that he has two televisions, to which Stella replies, “Oh, honey, he's teasing you. Nobody has two television sets.”


Pictured: Steve's triple monitor setup, as showcased in our Triple Monitor Gaming review last year.

With that, we want to know how many computers you own today and actively use (those dust buckets in the basement don't count). For the sake of staying on a level playing field, let’s limit it to true computer systems and exclude things like smartphones and tablets.

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I have my gaming laptop and my older self-built desktop. I plan on eventually upgrading the desktop.
 
Two towers, main pc in my media room (the only hard-wired system) and the other is connected to the large screen LCD tv in the living room using two wireless adapters for dual band router. Two laptops, one stays in the kitchen the other I use as my mobile. Will be making the final upgrades to my main computer and will use the spare parts to build a tower for the LCD tv in the bedroom.
 
I currently own 20 - but only have 10 actually in use. At my peak I had 21 machines - that was 5 years ago this April. I had to leave 8 of those 21 machines when we moved because the wife said I was out of control and needed to downsize. I'm including my laptops in all of this, of course.
 
Are we talking about working comps? I've got 7 working computers in the house, 5 of which are mine. I've probably got enough parts to slap another two together though.....
working:
-Amd 550 BE gaming rig- gaming/programming on 4 screens
-Core 2 Quad 8400 spare gaming rig- my brother uses this guy for gaming
-Alienware m11x that dell just repaired (bad hinges= new lcd)- school/gaming/programming
-Core 2 duo 6650 spare- I use this for fixing other comps because it always works.
-Pentium 4 3.0Ghz server- used for backups and streaming tv shows around the house
 
I own 9 mid tower PCs. They all work but I only have two plugged in at any one time. I rotate through them periodically to keep them updated. My wife has one mid tower which is also hooked up. The first two are old Dells. The rest I built myself.
 
3 laptops - one 15 inch and two 17 inch
1 netbook
2 desktops

Will be purchasing another 15 inch in February!!! I'm hooked!
 
Four. A laptop for roaming. A mac mini for most web-based useage. An older XP Pro tower to run stuff that doesn't run on any newer OS (smoothly anyway). And a slightly older Linux box running a file storage/backup/media server duty. Also, one more laptop for the kids homework, and another desktop for the wife's work. So for the household, six, but only four that I use myself.
 
2 Home servers (multi-media and backups)
1 Apache web server (development)
5 desktops
4 laptops
3 tablets
and probably enough spare parts to put together two or three more.

Maybe time for some spring cleaning soon...
 
Two. A Phenom II 965 tower gaming/general media center rig and an old Celeron 1.8GHz laptop which I basically bring with me everyday for on-the-go Photoshop work.
 
I own three 15 inch laptops all bought new from within the past three years. My
 
Never really thought of this! I have my main tower, a smaller one that I rarely use downstairs. A touch PC, a Mac Air, and an "Entertainment" laptop, along with a Netbook. Have a Motorola XOOM. Does that one count? :) And I have three or four in the garage, but I don't have them fired up anymore.
 
5 Desktops (1 of them has been converted to a server), 1 laptop, 1 tablet. All of which have their own purpose and I use at least 4 of them a day. :)
 
Let me think.. mmm... 10.
1) Pentium MMX, 200MHz (Firewall/router)
2) AMD K6-II ~380some MHZ
3) 1GHz HP machine, I've forgotten which kind of processor it has, it also is currently using my PCI Voodoo 3 video card.
4) Athlon XP 2600+ desktop
5) Second Athlon XP 2600+ Desktop
6) Athlon XP 2000+ Server
7) Athlon XP 1800+ machine
8) e-machines with an 850 MHz celeron-D
9) Compaq laptop with a turion 64 and 1GB of ram.
10) And last but not least, my "beastly" desktop. AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition, GeForce GT 440, dual widescreen LCDs, yada yada, everything every other nerd here has. And a couple gigs of storage.
 
I have my main workstation (appropriately named TS-One) running on a Core i7 870. I have a MacBook Pro that is a few years old but still my go-to laptop and a third machine (home server) managing lighting, music and some other stuff.

Embarrassingly, even my wife is sporting a newer laptop than me these days (which I bought for her birthday). Other PCs that I don't use have been given away over the years, most recently a Dell XPS laptop to my dad and Sony 10" ultraportable to my mother in law.
 
acer laptop: intel core 2 duo 1.6ghz, 2gb ddr2-800 ram, 120gb sata hdd, intel gma x3100 graphics

desktop 1: intel pentium dual core e5400 @2.7ghz stock, ecs g41-tm mobo, 2x2gb ddr2-800 kingston value ram, 1gb nvidia 9500gt graphics, 1tb hitachi sata hdd, 500gb hitcahi sata hdd

desktop 2: intel core i3-530 @2.93 ghz stock, intel dh55tc mobo, 2x2gb ddr3-1600 gskill ram @1333, 1gb ddr3 nvidia 9800gt graphics, 1tb hitachi sata hdd

desktop 3: intel celeron 1.7ghz, ecs p4vmm2 mobo, 512mb ddr1 ram, 320gb pata seagate hdd, 128mb nvidia mx440 graphics

desktop 4: intel pentium 166mhz mmx, asus mobo replaced with red fox mobo, 32mb edo ram, 2.1gb pata hdd (matshita?)

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desktop 3: still working since 2003, i recently disassembled.
desktop 4: still working since 1997 and recently became my lampshade stand.
 
I have 6 working machines in my house but only 4 of them are set up. There are 2 laptops 2 towers that aren't set up but still work well, a Mac Mini that I found in the garbage, and my lovely desktop, my pride and joy(even though I know it's not the greatest).

Phenom 2 X3 720 be @ 3.9ghz
Zalman 9700 LED
MSI 880G motherboard
Gigabyte GTX 460 1GB OC'd to 920/1940/1950
23" 1080p ViewSonic
2X2gb DDR3-1600
2X4gb DDR3-1600
700 Watt PSU
Antec 900
500GB seagate
750GB seagate
150GB WD Raptor
And a basic DVDRW drive

Order of CPU's I've owned is:

K6-2
Via motherboard with integrated 800mhz CPU
Athlon XP, don't remember the model
754 Sempron 2800+
AM2 Athlon X2 4200+
AM2 Athlon X2 BE (5000+?)
And my Current 720 BE

Those are only my desktops, I haven't the faintest clue what the laptops or the mac mini have, just that they're intel.
 
1 main 2600K @4.5 + 16gb + Radeon 7970 + 120 vertex 2 max iops
1 laptop (wife) msi gx740
1 laptop old dell core 2 1.8ghz (mine) <- almost never use
1 media center core 2 e8400 (also my nas)
 
Two computers in my possession, I've built (and given away) a few others for relatives.

Main Rig: i7-2600K, 8GB, GTS450 (waiting for GTX 660)
Second Rig: Q9400, 4GB, 7600GT

I only need one so I'm contemplating finding a new home for the second rig.
 
1x desktop - main use.
1x laptop - not really used much after finishing university. Sometimes use for android hacking, sometimes with HDMI to TV.
1x semi-disassembled server - old dell P4 3.0GHz. Used at one stage as a file server at uni.
 
Currently three computers and one laptop.

Sniper: i7-960, 12GB ram, 5870 xfire, Raid SSD
Server: i7-920, 6GB ram, 8800GT, 9TB HDD Space
SG05: E8400, 4GB, 6850, SSD + 750GB

Laptop is nothing special, old AMD Turion...

All used almost daily.
 
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