The title should be fairly self-explanatory.
Do you view personal computers more like communal objects or personal possesions? I see many families that have one PC in a central location and everyone uses it. Not in my house. I work in IT and I know all about profiles and all that. Doesn’t matter. My computer is mine. My wife has a laptop of her own but she doesn’t care if I use it. My daughter is 3 and she uses my computer for now but she will have her own computer (heavilly filtered) once she is 6 or so.
I would say that a primary computer has less lendability than a car. That is not to say that I never let anyone use my computer. I do, but I don’t like it.
How about you?
Personal item. Furthermore, I have two of them - one laptop, one desktop - and treat both that way. (My husband has one computer of his own. Yes, I use both of my computers at once, sometimes.) I even get twitchy about someone using my computer at work, though less so than at home.
Right now I have a desktop that is definitely mine, and this laptop which is questionably mine. I mean, it is…but not as far as my sister knows. Or something like that. I don’t like to share computers, not at all, so this situation is starting to piss me off.
-Lil
Personal item.
Why? Because, in my incredibly humble estimation, too many people are complete idiots when it comes to computers. I don’t want them anywhere near a machine that I want to use. Don’t touch it. Don’t even look at it if you don’t have to. The havoc that some people at work can wreak on a machine in a matter of minutes staggers the mind. I seriously have some people at work who think I somehow got the “good machine”. My computer works, so I must have lucked out and not gotten the lemon that they did. Oddly, most people seem to have a lemon.
I’ve been “lucky” like this three times in a row now, just in relation to my office-mates. Somehow the truth of the matter just doesn’t sink in.
Hate to break it too you, folks, but I didn’t luck out. I didn’t somehow get the magic machine that lacked mysterious glitches and flaws. I’m running Win2K and MacOS on my machine with no problems because I took the time to actually learn how to be computer savvy and thus not wind up using them them like a retarded bull in a china shop might utilize a gravy boat.
So my computer, be it my desktop at work or my laptop, is a very personal item. Keep yer mits off it.
Used to be a communal thing, but I need and have a Mac G5 for my own uses. I shoot and edit a lot of video and am learning some new programs like Photoshop, among others.
In other words, it’s a business computer that I also use to post here.
Communal.
I use it to study and play around and keep in touch with friends.
My 16 year old uses it for the same.
My fiance uses it to learn English.
My baby seems to enjoy the teletubbies site and key banging. She has her own keyboard but it’s no fun for her down there on the floor.
Cats love jumping on the keyboard and making the “ping” sound. Over and over.
Neighbor uses it occasionally to type something out for school.
The desktop in the kitchen is a communal item. We all (me, hubby and 7 yo son) use it.
We each also have our own laptop. Those are personal.
My computer is my baby. Totally mine. A mechanical extension of me, if you will.
I’m a graphic designer, so there’s a lot I couldn’t do without it. And it’s also my primary source of leisure and communication.
I also still have an emotional attachment to my Commodore 64.
Definitely a personal item. My husband and I each have our own, and never use the other’s (unless of course, there’s some valid reason, like his is defragging, and needs to check his email or something). Of course, we’re both a little excessively anal about our computers, so it’s better this way.
Personal item.
Unless I specifically allow you to use my computer, get the hell of!
Personal item. I’d rather not have anyone on it unless I am there. Watching. Every Single Click.*
I’ve got it set exactly how I like it. I know everything installed on it. I’ve got some programs and hardware for recording music and they like things configured in a certain way. If something is changed they freak and stop working. So I am pretty anal about who uses my computer.
Slee
*Last time someone used my compuer they got it infected. Within about 5 minutes. This person, a relative, has a CS degree. I don’t know why I let the person use my compuer. I know better.
A lot of my friends are seriously behind the curve, and thus lack computers of any kind, and I used to not really mind when they’d come over and borrow mine.
Until a roommate took to surfing on it whenever I was at work, and I came home to spam toolbars, pop-ups, and a freakin’ deluge of malware so deeply embedded that the whole damn system had to be re-installed from scratch.
He was so stupid that I can totally picture him clicking on those fake Microsoft pop-ups, totally panicked, thinking that he’ll “fix” whatever “problem” has just occurred…thus, of course, agreeing to let God and his dog invade my computer.
I’m still kind of upset that he moved to Colorado before I got a chance to kill him.
So re: the OP, my computer is now a very personal item. Like my cell phone or my purse. You better have a damn good reason for touching it.
Nobody touches my baby >_>
I let my parents use it, but last time I let anyone besides them on my computer for any significant period of time I came back to find my homepage changed to a Korean film star’s webpage, a new spyware toolbar for my browser and 2 new mysterious shortcuts on my desktop. The person who used it insisted that she didn’t install anything, and told me she’d won a prize for being the 100 000th visitor to a site and asked for help collecting it :smack:
Communal.
Ours sits in our living room. That way we can make sure everyone shares (and the kids aren’t doing anything they shouldn’t be). We each have our own profiles and we all use it differently. I use it to surf the web, log in to the office from home, do the family finances, etc. My wife surfs message boards and uses it as her music/entertainment center. My kids play games and do some of their homework on it.
We’re getting to the point one of these days where we will need to get a second one so I won’t have to wait until everyone is done using it before I can get on.
I’m thinking that one will be a wireless laptop for Dad.
Personal item. My desktop (and my laptop before I gave it away) is my baby, and I hate to have other people using it, it just bothers me. Also, my mother is a total dunce when it comes to computers, so I don’t like to be anywhere near a computer she’s currently using, or I’ll probably get roped into troubleshooting. And I hate not having access to my machine–I’m truely addicted.
Personal item. Not only because I’ve got some porn I’ve downloaded (nothing too shocking) and drawings that I’ve done, but also because I hate anyone fiddling with my settings. My mother tends to be a bit sloppy with a mouse. And so, my computer’s password protected, as it is when the computer comes back from its screen saver state. In addition to the fact that I hide “questionable” pictures in folders that I’ve given very nondescriptive titles, I change my password every few months.
Personal items, definitely, you DO NOT TOUCH my machine without my permission, both the PowerBook G4 and G4 Mirror Door tower have a “guest” account with minimal permissions for the rare time when someone needs to use my machine
we have 4 active Macs in the house, (i don’t really count all the old Macs i’ve collected over the years**) my machines are a 1 GHz AlBook G4 and a 1.25 Dualie Mirror Door, Mom has my old iBook Dual USB 500MHz and a Sawtooth G4 350 (that i dropped a spare 400MHz processor in to speed it up slightly)
Mom’s figured out one of the advantages to having a Mac repair tech as a son is that she never needs to buy another computer, if she waits long enough, she’ll get one of my old hand-me-downs…
**well, okay, if you insist, here’s the complete list of all the Macs in the house
Apple IIe (yes, not a Mac, but still an Apple)
*Mac 128k
*Mac II (used as a computer stand for the Mirror Door…)
Mac Classic II (dead, chekerboard of death)
*SE/30
*Quadra 605
*Performa 600CD (works, but it’s a crappy machine)
PowerMac 7100 (dead)
*Performa 6300 (works, but crappy, built up out of spare parts)
*PowerMac 7500 (works, but has been parted out)
**iBook G3 Dual USB 500
**PowerMac G4/400 Sawtooth
**PowerBook G4 Aluminum 1 GHz
**PowerMac G4 Mirror Door Dual 1.25 GHz
- still works as good as new
**currently active
and the machines that i still consider “mine” even though i gave them to other people, both of these machines were also built out of spare parts, bought the individual components for pennies on the dollar out of the scrap bin at my old jobs
Bondi iMac 266 trayload (gave to an old college freind that needed a good computer)
Blueberry iMac 333 trayload (gave to Sis and her husband)
My computer is just that…MINE. The only real exception to that is my son, who is a computer professional himself, and he knows better than to make any changes. He also has his own profile and only uses it when he and his family visit.
(Well, of course, the other exceptions are my cats, but they mainly either want to sleep on the monitor or on the keyboard. I’m beginning to wonder about my big grey tuxedo male though…I think he is carrying on a cyber affair with a hot little furball somewhere while I am at work.)
Definitely personal.
Our preferences for disk organization and interfaces may overlap a bit but each of us would go crazy trying to adapt to the other person’s methods. We do, however, feel free to use the other person’s computer in some situations because we don’t have identical applications installed.
I own my computer. I’ve used a computer at the last four places of business I’ve worked at, but I’ve always supplied my own (and at the last 3 of the 4, it’s been this one, a PowerBook that goes damn near everywhere I go).
The settings are mine, the utilities are mine, the macros and customizations are mine. No one else uses it except visitors to our home on rare and limited occasions (e.g, “Do you mind if I use your computer to browse a web site and see if they put up a reply I need to read?”)
.