The first computer I bought with my own money

Our family’s first computer was a Packard Bell, sometime around 1997. That one was the family machine, though: shared, supervised, and not really mine to mess with. The first computer that was actually mine, bought with my own money, was an eMachines 333cs.

eMachines had just shown up. It was a brand-new budget brand, launched in 1998, with a slightly wild idea: sell a whole working PC for around $400, back when everyone else wanted roughly twice that. The 333cs arrived in their spring 1999 lineup at $399, running a Cyrix MII at 333 MHz with Windows 98 on it. I wanted one the moment they existed. I had been squirreling away money for years, and once I finally had enough I grabbed it during a back-to-school sale that summer, from either Office Max or Office Depot (I genuinely cannot remember which). I even bought the monitor to go with it.

I cannot overstate what a big deal it was to have my own computer. The family Packard Bell was for homework and careful, grown-up-approved use. This one was mine to break, fix, format, and rebuild as many times as I wanted. Which, if you have read the history of this site, is more or less exactly what I did, version after version. Having my own machine in 1999 is a huge part of why this whole hobby ever took off.