I have always had a deep interest in computers, and technology in general.

Since my early days I have been tinkering with electrical and mechanical things. Got inducted into computers by a ZX Spectrum (with a huge 64Kb memory and audio tape for secondary storage, BASIC the only language and your TV as the monitor) in my school days and have since been hooked.

In college got to see my first IBM compatible machine (or maybe it was an IBM itself). It had a 5 ½ Floppy Disk Drive, 8088 processor at 4.77 Mhz, its own monitor and used to take up most of the desk space. Then in first job got to actually take a peek inside on of these machines. At this stage there were the faster AT machines as well running at a blistering 12Mhz, with 1 MB RAM and 20 - 40 MB hard disks. Color monitors had started arriving with an amazing 16 color capability. I was now taking apart computers, assembling them, debugging them, demonstrating them and providing customer support.

We had great tools in PC Tools and Norton's Utilities, applications like Wordstar, Lotus 123, etc. All of them ran in their limited 640KB space beautifully. It used to be fun and challenging to configure your config.sys and autoexec.bat to make sure there were no memory clashes in TSRs, extended memory, etc.

Then came Windows 3; my first experience with a GUI. By now Intel was shipping 386s and 486s and the default size of hard disks was 120 MB. Along came 3.11 and we were now networking. This was also the time I had close brushes with Viruses.

Then I came across NT 3.5 and 4.0, SQL Server, MS Office, Windows 95, etc. Now the standard configuration became a Pentium 100 with 16MB RAM, 540 MB HDD and a color VGA monitor. This was also the time Internet was introduced in a big way in India.

In all this time I got plenty of opportunity to go under the hood, work with various branded products. Did a bit of programming in self-taught Assembly and 'C'.

Got a chance to assemble my own computer last year, BX board, PII350, 4 GB, AGP, etc., etc.

Now at this time of writing we see Pentiums IIs being phased out and PIII becoming the mainstay processor, although Celeron is still being shipped. It has been fun so far in this field and I do think it will continue this way for a long long time to come.

Now a days I get more chances to tinker with software products than hardware ones, but I am happy doing it. As long as technology keeps moving ahead, it will always provide you with more than enough material to learn and understand new things. With the kind of gizmos and gadgets coming out theses day, computers in some form or the other are invading new territories every day. You will find one in your car, in your home, in your phones, in every facet of your life you will come across something that is either run by a computer or is a computer.

Since the last two years, I have diverted my attention to Lotus Notes/ Domino and NT administration. Have just got my self certified in AD & SA and am planning to get a CLP in R5 before the December 99 deadline.