This just struck me (perhaps because I'm finishing up my first McCoffee of the day).

Who here shares his/her computer with other family members??  For me its simple, its just me.  My wife doesn't care the least for using the computer (so she tells me).  Jan

my 2 systems - the desktop and the laptop are offlimits to anyone else.

not that they could use them. I've customised things so much in Win7........ everythings there, just setup for the way I work.....

Being the computer nerd I am, and having to fix soooo many problems on shared computers, I absolutely will not let anyone else use my computer. I spent more money buying the parts and the building my computer than my car, no joke. I religiously use Sandboxie to run my web browser, I highly recommend that program, especially for shared computers. It's saved my a$$ a few times when I got a doozy of a virus. I just delete sandbox and it's gone. No Virus scan needed. But back to the original question, nobody uses my PC, I'm totally anal about it. I'd say ask my nieces, but then they'd have to use my PC to reply lol

I have two of my own...a desktop and a netbook. While I think the hub would love to use mine at times, he can't get past my Rainmeter theme ;o). Seems he can't "find" anything, or so he says...lol. Besides, he's got two of his own ;o).

Laurie

This is my machine only, Family go near it on pain of death..

pain of death is to easy.

switch to on Pain of Pain.

1 laptop for guests. 2 laptops 2 PCs and render farm for me. They are welcome to adjust the volume on ITunes and Pandora, that's it. But I'm real nice about it, I just don't share the passwords

I have my laptop and my computer no one but me uses them apart from my partner occasionally using my laptop.

My partner has his own computer

And my two children have a computer each.

LOL, I sort of assumed that for everybody on this forum.  I've had to go to neighbors to fix theirs because their children got their sticky fingers downloading crap not to mention the occasional spill of Coke, Pesi, etc mixed with cake, cookies laying lovingly inside the keyboard or grease inside the Tower (how the heck grease got in there is beyond me).  So, no, under punishment of a slow and painful death, no one touches mine.  Jan  

last time someone tried to use my machine while I was at work....

the PC promptly switched the Primary Display to the TV I'd hooked up on the other side of the room and refused to switch back.

one of my oldest friends, who is also a computer expert, came round and tried to fix it. he gave up saying "where is everything? what's he done to this??"

when I got home, took me 3 seconds to switch back.. I still don't know what happened, but that PC was a real bitch at times... tho oddly, never to me ;)

Very Evil snicker while typing, YEAH! that nasty PC..... oh that's a good one, love it!!! Jan

The husband needs supervision just turning the thing on and the kids aren't allowed near either of mine, especially since I found clickpotato on tax deduction #1's laptop.  

I had to get a fourth machine and set it up plain vanilla so the wife (a retired secretary of 35 years) could figure out how to check her email. All she does at mine is scratch her head and ask why the response is so slow (during one of my constant renders!)

I can't tell you how many times I've left Poser rendering and my husband gets on the computer and for some reason Poser hates him and freezes.

But normally he has his laptop and I have my puter. bbbuuuttt..... we share my computer often.

We use to be a 2 computer household  (well there were more in the late 90s when I was teaching myself everything I could about computers to advance my career prospects in the Sillicon Valley) but with a tightening of the pursestrings we are down to 1.  (A laptop is coming soon  ... for business, but that will be shared as well). Jo's computer is a 2001 Gateway with  8 gb of hd ...  it's just too weak to even run the internet any more ...  so we share mine right now.  We have one password.  I trust her.  She never doesn anything funkie.  Never has.  She gets on  ... does some stuff in word, checks her e-mail, e-bay and a couple other sites and does some studying with her online courses.  Nothing to put the system at risk. I'm  okay with that.  I've known her for 42 years, if I can't trust  her now, when will I?

When we get the  laptop ( part of a "funding award" I'm recieving to start my Graphics Design business) she will be able to work on that while I work on the desktop. that is all good.  It can be done.  If the right combination of personalities are involved. :)

Boni

My wife and I share the same desktop. No problems there. About all she does is play games on facebook.

My daughter just moved out but while she was here would get on the computer. She gets on there and tries to upload about 200 photos to facebook at around 4mb each and wonders why its taking so long. Tried to show her how to resize them for the web, and even wrote a program that would resize them all in two button clicks. Her reply was, "thats too much work, I just want to upload pictures".

She used to get nasty viruses from myspace all the time. And silly me would spend all day cleaning it up and salvageing the os. Now I dont even ask if anyone has anythiyng on the computer they want to save. I just format and install. Nobody goes to myspace anymore. :-)

Claire uses my computers from time to time, mainly email, shopping and Facebook.

No problems at all since one time several years ago - before she got web smart - when she managed to install tons of spyware on the internet box.

My language was colourful, instructive and - so it would seem - memorable because it's never happened again.

I actually share my compter quite a bit with the members of my family.

I don't worry about them breaking things. It's me who actually manages to destroy perfectly good household items just by looking at them, or so it seems. Just this christmas I some how managed to  destroy my computers motherboard. Two years a go I found out the hard way, that applejuice and computer electronics don't mix very well. :/

until the last move, it was the missus (facebook, farm-everything) and me. 1 granddaughter on MS paint (a gateway program...heheh...;) and Lolcats (about the right target audience for a 4-year-old...;)

The cat uses the desktop, but only with my supervision.

Never had a problem….

well I am missing a small flash drive,.. but other than that…

I have several computers so I just set one up for someone if they need one. One for My Daughter,Girlfriends,even one for guests(Friends and visiting family members)

"PC" stands for "Personal Computer"...everyone should have their own IMO...and never should any of those be mine.

8 )

Tom

Here is a shot of my latest PC.

LOL, love the steampuke computer. No viruses will ever touch that one, perhaps a cat with a troubled stomach.  Jan 

Two windows desktops, two macbook pros, three windows laptops, and an iPad, and everybody (wife and two teenage daughter's) grabs whatever is closest.

PS - I added TV remote control software to the iPad - very handy.

Two PCs. One normal and the other networked in for storage only. The wife uses my box but her account is set up to run in a virtual machine. I'm tired of the crap she keeps getting for her random web surfing and flash games. My account and the Admin account are passworded and she doesn't know them. My grandson and god son use it as well but only on her account. It amazes me how they can end up with so much crap in that virtual box. Since it erases every time they log out I don't really care any more. If I ever win the lottery (not likely as I don't play) then I'll buy a new machine and they can do with this one what they will.

Quote - ...steampuke...

If that's not a typo it's the absolute best term I have ever heard for the over used/hackneyed/done to death/ridiculous genre.

In fact, if it is a typo it's still bloody brilliant.

well you'd hate my machines then Sam. I'm a fan of well done steampunk eg the Time Machine from the 2002 movie. the Disney take on the Nautilus.. things like that.

not the idiotic gluing of gears onto everything, giving it a bad paint job and wearing goggles...wtf do goggles have to do with it? or endlessly copying WETA's beautiful rayguns?.... growls

Gads, its a typo change steampuke to read steampunk---I have no idea why my fingers typed puke except that my computer glasses' left lens popped out and I was fishing to place it back in att.  Jan

@ Plutom - Serendipity indeed. Hehehe.  I believe I will use the term henceforth.  :D

@ Magnus - Your stuff sounds impressive if they are like the examples you cited.  I loved the novel by Gibson and Sterling but the - as you put it - idiotic gluing of gears onto everything really makes me want to reach for my gat.

BTW, have you ever read Luther Arkwright?  That's got a lot of Steampunk elements in there, all of which make sense in context.

I have two desktops (main comp. upstairs and my hubby's and teen's comp. downstairs).Me I learned my lesson about letting everyone on my comps as I kept having to fix it...lol.So no one except the hubby gets on my desktop as I don't feel like arguing with him about using his own...rofl.

Whenever my daughter or friends ask me if they can use my computer the answer is a resounding NO.They ask why and I say cause I am tired of fixing it and explaining what you can and cannot do on it :-).I also have everything and I mean everything on it password protected including my browser...lol.So I know when someone is trying to get on my computer and man they never hear the end of it (Language gets very colorful).My mom says I can out cuss a sailor blushes!

ironically (maybe brassonicly?...;) there are some gorgeous steampunk desktops and laptops out there, crafted from dark woods and polished brass keys, with prices to match. Gluing gears on a nerf gun ain't necessarily steampunk

I have another deskop, with Ubuntu and Win 2k (and I forgot the password to Ubuntu...;) No one uses that one but me...;)

My wife prefers our old (1997) PowerMac 7300 for all her written stuff (and games), but uses the newer G5 for all the internet shopping (etc); the old machine has Explorer, which basically finds it hard to cope with the modern net. When she wants the G5 me and the cat go watch tv or dvds. Greatnephew (age 11) calls sometimes and plays with Bryce or Poser.

Well, we have 2 desktops and a laptop. One desktop is supposed to be mine the other is my son's and the laptop is my hubby's, but everybody wants to use mine. My hubby doesn't even like me calling it "mine". But nobody has messed it up too bad yet, just my son rearranging my desktop (i hate that) and hiding my taskbar.

LOL, you could, move all your desktop icons to a hidden file after making a screenshot, then make a wallpaper of them for your desktop.  Then have them try clicking on one of those puppies--Jan

Quote - LOL, you could, move all your desktop icons to a hidden file after making a screenshot, then make a wallpaper of them for your desktop.  Then have them try clicking on one of those puppies--Jan

LOL...maybe I'll do that the next time my nephew comes over ;o).

Laurie

Sadly I share both of mine.

Kids get to use the laptop.  Only messed it up once, since they started randomly clicking stuff.  A real -long- talk about not leaving the site I load for them has ended that thankfully.  The daughter only uses it to check her email and the couple of groups on google she is part of.  The boys are the random clickers.  Needless to say they don't have the password to the desktop.

My desktop/rendering machine is currently being usurped for their dad playing Grand Fantasia (a free MMORPG) far too often when he is here.  And Poser 8 has fits rendering when he is on it.

No worries about him buggering it up, he is net paranoid, if it pops up anything at him he doesn't understand, I get yelled for.  Has been since I freaked at him back in 2003, when I spent a week removing porn popups from the comp we had then.  It was not pretty, or polite.

I have two computers for me and one for the rest of the family.

The only thing I share is my internet connection.

Wot! Interupt my rendertime? Never!

er, that defiance cost me dearly had to get laptops for both my sons, an electric fence would have been cheaper, but the whining....hmmm, now they have more drive space than they need! hmmm...

We have 2...but hubby rarely uses "mine".  Because you can't really game on it, because it doesn't have a very good video chip.  That's what I get for going "OOH, SHINEY" and buying a touchscreen computer simply because it's touchscreen.

But, my husband's computer is our media station as well as gaming machine, and can totally handle it.  Then again, he's got a 6 core processor with 16gb ram.  So, I REALLY get moving on my Minecraft rollercoaster.  :lol:

16 gigs of ram!  I am so jealous.  All my computers together do not add up to 16 gigs of ram!

So am I!  He won't let me render on it :P

Quote - So am I!  He won't let me render on it :P

Time for the rolling pin ;o)

Laurie

If only we owned one....I miss my rolling pin (yeah, it broke.  In a non-beating, but baking related, incident).

Stop!

Mallet time!