how do married couples (especially w/ kids) treat the home computer usage?

My gf and I have one desktop computer that gets used a few times a month, primarily when she works from home. She can “hook up to” her work computer, see her work desk top, etc. because it is hoked up to a printer, I’ll use it every so often to make a hard copy of a recipe.

We each have laptops. She has a blackberry phone that she uses to check work emails. I have an Android phone that I use as a computer if my iPad is charging or in another room and I’m lazy.

My wife has a desktop (vintage 1999, when she was able to get 100% tax writeoff in one year to upgrade to a Y2K (remember that?) compliant computer) and I have a laptop. We know each other’s passwords and do occasionally look at each other’s email. Neither machine has a password and we occasionally use each other’s machine. In addition, we have a netbook that we share when traveling.

When I got my first computer in 1982 and the kids were still living at home, we had it in our bedroom and every used it. By the time, I had more than one computer, the kids had flown the nest and now have kids of their own.

The oldest got into the family game last and has a four yo who doesn’t use computers (at least not when he was 3 1/2 last December when we visited) and my daughter and SIL each have their own machines. Whether they share passwords, I have never asked. I have used my daughter’s computer and it requires no password to use.

Kid #2 has four children. Until they hit 13, the only computer they are permitted to use is in the family room and they must share. After that age (and kid #3 will be 13 in ten days) they get to have a computer in their room and get their own FB account.

Kid #3 has one child who is five. He uses an i-pad (incessantly), but does not spend much time on the house computer, which is in the kitchen. Both parents have work laptops which are off limits to everyone else.

We have ten computers in the house for four people - not including cell phones, video game consoles, or internet access points (like Google TV) - but including iPads.

(Actually, more, but several aren’t currently plugged in, one is on its way to my mother in law, it just hasn’t left yet, and a few may be so old you wouldn’t want to plug them in - at least one had its power supply repurposed.).

Everybody has their own desktop computer at home, and we have an Ipad we take with us on trips. Lurve to play Words With Friends while we eat out.

Yeah. Almost all my friends are gamers, or do at least some work at home. You can’t play with your spouse if you don’t have your own computers!

Everyone has their own laptop. Before that everyone had their own desktop. We do still run two “public” desktops for heavy gaming, working remotely, or visitors. (In our living room, since we’re nerds with no decorating sense.)

We closely oversee the kids’ computer use. I tend to leave my stuff open, which I suppose I should stop doing as the kids get to teen years, in case they get nosy. My private stuff is just journals and email. My partner is more discreet with his private stuff.

We do have access to most of each others’ accounts, in case of extreme emergency, but we respect each others’ privacy. (Does not apply to kids and Internet. I check up on them.)

My computers are boxed up in the garage. I moved and never bothered getting high speed internet because I would have to fish cable through my impossibly low sloped attic and I use my phone to access the Internet 99% of the time.

Our family (me, my wife and our two kids) share an iMac. We each have our own accounts, and it’s set up so the kids can only be on for an hour a day apiece before they get locked out. My wife and I also share an old MacBook.

You all got some young-ass shit. My parents didn’t even know what I FTP’d in the late 80s/early 90s. I was into some fucked up shit, like messed up animal pr0n and shit yo.

MrTao and I have each had our own computer for a couple of decades. I prefer desktops, and have no use for laptops. I just make sure I have a smokin’ desktop. :slight_smile: He has desktop, couple of laptops, couple of IPads, and assorted toys.

The boys, who are here part-time, have their own computers here and share a computer at home with each other. Theirs is separate from mom’s because they manage to download all kinds of crap, of course. :stuck_out_tongue: Oddly enough, they don’t have that problem with their computers here, but that’s probably because they’re FPSing all day :slight_smile:

Dangerosa, I have 7 for 2 people, under your same standards. (If you count “old things not in use”, it’s 13, assuming the bondi blue iMac is still in the garage where I saw it two years ago).

When I was young, we had one computer, in the dining room, maintained by myself. My computer-illiterate dad bought it because. . . I don’t even know why. Because he likes shiny things. He had a box, a mess of cables, a blank hard drive, and a pile of floppies, and my mother yelling at him about this $2000 pile of junk he couldn’t operate. I have very fond memories of sitting on the diningroom floor, gamely reading the manual, formatting the drive and installing DOS.

You want to know what is COMPLETELY horrifying? Being 14 years old and having to explain to your father about histories, cookies, and how I did not ever want to accidentally find his porn again. Eventually he bought me my own computer to keep me from hogging the main one.

By late high school (mid 90’s) we were a “computer is a personal item” family. I found it really bizarre when I got to college and my roommate thought my computer was a communal appliance like the microwave. The only things my husband and I share are the Mac Pro hooked up to the TV for games and media, and we each have a login on the Macbook Air bought for travel & mobile computing.