Wow, I am amazed by the variety of people here... I assumed many would be programmers, sys admins or net admins, but not the case at all!
Paul, Cambridge, England, 38, daughter living in Albuquerque with her mother, remarried with little boy aged 17 months, not much time to practise hobbies right now but the Z soaks up the spare time I don't have.
Built a computer (not like today when it's just assembling, I mean literally soldering together) in 1980 aged 13 - a UK101 (Ohio Superboard clone). Cost GB£220 (lot of money for a kid). Took days and days of soldering, worked first time! 4K (not 4M) memory expansion cost me GB£25!
Bought a Sharp pocket computer (just found it on google:
http://www.pc1500.com/) aged 17y for my A levels. It looked like an oversized pocket calculator with 24 char dot-matrix display and qwerty keyboard. I programmed it in basic, got the advanced programmers/hardware manual from Sharp and was able to write stuff in assembler, and built a cassette interface for it. Sold it during university years to raise money for an Amiga 500 (a lot of money for a student living on GB£1100 a year back in 1987). Learned 68000 assembler, gui programming etc.
Graduated in electronic/electrical engineering from University of Leeds, worked on radio systems with embedded microprocessors (software & hardware), a stint doing tcp/ip networking left me wanting more, joined a consultancy doing Internet stuff (programming websites, setting up firewalls, routers etc) when virtually noone had heard of the Internet (I remember receiving one of the first spam emails of anyone in the office!), learned Solaris.
Joined an ISP as senior sysadmin, got really deep into Solaris/unix. Started dabbling with linux (redhat 7). Left, went back into programming in Java, employer went bust. Became consultant in a big internet payment company where I really got into Linux (debian servers, suse desktops), left when it was bought by a bank 2 years ago, back to the ISP which had gone bust, sold, bought and rebuilt. Am still there, developing java websites and sneaking in fancy features that are cool!
I've been a Z fan since a real geek friend of mine told me about the Zaurus when the 5xxx first emerged, he bought one, but I didn't appreciate linux enough back then. I became a PDA addict quite late compared to colleagues, started with a 2nd hand palm compatible Visor Deluxe, then as addiction grew, sold that and got a Sony N770 palm, then a Palm T3 18 months ago. Palm was great for PIM, but networking was frustrating, and my love of linux had been growing.. had been lusting after a clamshell Z, started reading the forums, and took the plunge in March this year. I intended to sell my Sony 770 & T3 but somehow... I still have my UK101, Amiga 500, and also bought a Sinclair ZX80, 81, Spectrum, Memotech, Amiga 3000 and others to collect.
I still use my T3 as a PIM and for games, but the Z is ebook reader, web browser, mp3 player, ssh client, vnc... latest learning how to convert video for quality playback, and one day hope to actually write the other 50% of my phone dialler/sms/fax program in Qt/C++... and write it up and put it on my web pages.
