What do you use your computer for?

Work (Photoshop and Lightroom mostly), going online, and the occasional music project. Not much gaming for me, but I will very occasionally use it for that, as well, though for the past few months I’ve just been playing through some old GameCube games on a Nintendo Wii I dug up from the closet.

Gaming
Shopping
Writing on my book series
Reading webcomics
Watching videos
Designing lego creations
Ripping CDs for my ipad
Infrequent stuff as needed like taxes
Of all of these, shopping, webcomics, and videos get the bulk of the time. (I really ought to be writing more than I do.)

No gaming.

Word processor: writing lists; keeping farm records; writing up seed and other orders; making posters for markets; recipes to print out to take to market; keeping personal records; notes for, from, and about planning board meeting and issues; writing fiction/poetry.

Getting news and weather reports.

Communication, including personal, farm business, and planning board business; mostly by email.

Research: farm products and farm issues, planning board issues, background for writing, other things I’m curious about that I trip across online or elsewhere and want to know more about.

Shopping, mostly for things I can’t find locally. Less time on this than on the others, but some.

Goofing off online: including message boards; the equivalent of wikiwalks though often not on wiki; online comics; and occasional videos, mostly short ones. Internet connection’s too slow to play some things.

Gaming (Lord of the Rings online; Civilisation; Masters of Magic)

E-mail

Chess and bridge coaching notes + handouts

Youtube

Downloading films and TV series (then using my large-screen TV as the monitor)

SDMB!

No games ----- except sometimes a round or two of Cat Bowling.

Mostly writing and here with some photo storage and sorting now and then. If it wasn’t for the SDMB I would probably make do with an old-school word processor but those are harder to find that I imagined. (I actually wanted to replace my old Brother and lets just say it was an adventure.)

Work, and while I’m working (remotely, connected via company software) I read the SDMB, Facebook, chat to friends, travel pages, do my banking, make appointments, buy stuff online, misc time-wasting activities.

AFTER work, watch Netflix movies, YouTube, and read the SDMB, FB, and all the above as well.

No gaming.

I find it very hard to believe that people use it for this disreputable activity. :smiley:

Desktop computer (Windows 7) - collects dust. Has some old files that I might need later
Work laptop - mainly work.
Personal laptop - News, look up stuff, occasionally listen to music
Phone - my “radio”, check work stuff, news, look up stuff, occasionally a phone.
Tablet - read books, mindless games, news, look up stuff

Oh yeah, besides my computer I also have a tablet, which I didn’t mention before because I don’t consider it a real computer. I use it to play mindless games on. It’s useless for anything else, as best I can tell.

It may be more accurate to say that the tablet uses me to play mindless games. I really should quit the thing.

Writing
Research for writing projects
Reading news, other browsing
Email
Social media (including SBMB)
Banking and bill paying
Airline reservations and travel arrangements

After work, I use a laptop to show Netflix, HBO Go, and Youtube and other movies and shows on my TV.

The last video game I played (aside from Free Cell and games like that) aside from was probably Space Invaders.:smiley:

Online streaming sports, during baseball season.
Computer versions of pre-computer games, like Monopoly, Yahtzee
You-tube music playlists.
A daily check of news, email, etc.
Forums
Wiki, translation, other look-ups
Very rarely for banking, shopping, etc.

The usual stuff that people do online. A few solitaire games. I’m not a big surfer other than the occasional down-the-YouTube-rabbit-hole stuff. I used to game a lot before everything went to gaming platforms and PC versions went to shit.

I spend most of my time on the PC writing.

I often hear people say words to the effect, “I just don’t understand what people think is wrong with a good old fashioned typewriter.”

I use my old typewriter and I love it. I tried to use one of those new fangled fancy word processors but what is the point? I just love the sound and the feel of typing on my old Hagnamat and Son Typewriter. For thinking and writing at the same time, it just can’t be beat.

My response is that with a PC and word processor, you can edit your thoughts and rearrange them without the need for throwing out an entire sheet of paper and retyping it all over. It’s so much more efficient to write using a modern PC. In addition, its so much easier to record your thoughts and then come back to them later and flesh them out.

I can’t tell you how many times that I had an idea while using a typewriter and by the time I got to the end of the page, I had completely forgotten what that new idea was. With my PC and word processor, I can just open a new window and record a thought and then cut and paste it later on. It is so much easier to write when using a PC.

But if someone prefers to write in longhand or to write using a typewriter, I just nod and say words to the effect, “Oh well, to each their own.” After all, it seems kind of silly to insult someone if there is no good reason to do so.

Where do you still often hear people say this in this day and age, though?

Personal iMac: Mostly web browser/surfing; Facebook, SDMB, maybe the occasional Netflix/Prime show or movie, porn.

Personal iPad: Mostly reading on the Kindle app before bed. I don’t use it much beyond that.

Personal iPhone: Social media, SMS/texting/IM, news apps, deleting email as it arrives.

I’m not a gamer at all, I’ve tried on occasion and I just can’t do it. Too many buttons/complicated controls and too steep a learning curve to interest me enough.

There’s an XKCD for that. :slight_smile:

Work laptop - mainly work with occaisonal visits to BBC, local news and weather sites
Personal laptop - More news, weather, personal email, Facebook, Reddit, taxes, e-banking online games. SDMB.
Phone - Send and receive texts, look at news, weather, personal email, Facebook, Reddit, online games and listen to music. The key for e-banking is an app, so I use both my laptop and my phone to do e-banking. Once or twice a month use it as a phone.
Tablet - Read books. Send and receive texts, look at news, weather, personal email, Facebook, Reddit and online games. SDMB.

“Never end a sentence with a preposition!”

“OK. What do you use your computer for, asshole?” :smiley:

At home:
Writing novels and short story reviews.
Wasting time online.

At work:
Solving other people’s computer problems. Logging on to their computers remotely. Imaging new computers. Looking up how to do things. Troubleshooting.

Speaking of phones, I do most of my editing of audio and video on the phone now instead of on the desktop. Even transcoding of videos to h265 is just about as fast on the phone as on my (older) PC–the PC has twice the clock speed, but half the number of cores.