I thought it might be fun to remember the specs for your first PC, and then post the specs for your current system.

My first PC (1994)

80486 processor @ 100 MHz
8 MB RAM
aprox. 80 MB hardrive
SVGA monitor (got up to 640x480)
Soundblaster compatible sound card
MS-DOS with Windows 3.1

Used this one to play Wolfenstein 3d, Doom, Heretic, Dark Forces, Descent, Hocus Pocus, Jazz Jackrabbit, among others. The first game I tried to install on it that just couldn't work was Dragon Lore (anybody remember that one?)

* * *

My current PC (built on january 2011)

AMD Phenom X4 @ 3.2 GHz (32x faster)
6 GB DDR3 RAM (750x more)
500 GB hardrive (6250x more!!!)
Radeon 6870 1 GB VRAM
Acer 24'' widescreen (1080x1920, 4x more resolution)
Windows 7

I use this one to play both old and new games, Might and Magic 1 and The Witcher 2 living side by side :D

First PC was an Atari 800XL with 64KB of ram, a 1.79mhz 6502 CPU and a 5.25" floppy drive. Though if you are wanting to compare x86 machines I had:

Pentium 133mhz
16MB Ram
2GB hard drive
1MB SVGA card
640 by 480 16 bit 15 inch monitor
Windows 95

I forget when I put together my current main desktop, but the CPU and Ram are a cheap upgrade about a month ago.

AMD Phenom II X4 3.4ghz (102 time as fast when counting all 4 cores)
8GB DDR2 (512 times as much)
3.75TB of hard drive space (250, 500 and a 3tb external) (1875 times as much)
Radeon 5770 1GB (Will be upgraded soonish) (1024 times as much memory)
Samsung 24" monitor at 1920 by 1200 32 bit (7.5 times as many pixels)
Windows 7 (About a billion times better than Win9x)

TRS80 Color Computer, early 1980s?

Some 8-bit processor, I have no idea how fast.
4kB RAM, which we upgraded to 16kB. It even came with a fancy new replacement 16kB sticker.
What's a harddrive? Could save/load programs to/from audio cassette, also programs came on cartridges.
Monitor was a television.
The sound was excellent. I remember it produced the sound of electronic popcorn and blowing raspberries really well.
I don't remember an OS. It either defaulted to BASIC, or BASIC was readily accessible. BASIC was awesome and I would often run out of memory writing programs which were too large. There was no way to edit an existing line, I had to retype the whole line. I couldn't even back the cursor up to insert a new character in the line I was working on. Still, it was easy to access the joystick input and I totally loved it. I only had a small BASIC guide which came with the computer, but I'd occasionally buy magazines with programs in them and learn tons of new stuff. PEEK and POKE were magic barely-documented commands and I'd scour magazines for the secret numbers (addresses) that would work with them.

My current PC is from 2008 and nobody would bother reading the specs were I to type them out.

edit: My brother drooled BlackJack (kind of like a black Starburst chew) onto the keyboard and the T key was dodgy forever after. I kept some pliers at hand to unpress it often.

First PC? Post C64? :P

Ibm 386 (i also had a Cyrix II cpu at some point..)
4mb ram
SVGA monitor 14 inch
Soundblaster 16 bit
40MB Conner drive (yep had one of those )
MSDOS 5/ windows 3.1

Current PC (other is an older AMD quad core)

Intel G850 @2.9
8GB DDR3 ram
1TB + 1TB hard drive
Radeon HD 5670
Creative Audigy Zs 2
20 inch Asus widescreen LCD
Windows 7

My first computer type thingy was a John Sands badged SEGA SC-3000, games came in cartridges, on tape and in spiral bound books filled with code. Australia and New Zealand actually had quite active communities for these back in the day.

My first PC Was an Asus 486DX4-100, i think it had 2 megs of RAM and a 400mb HDD (might have been smaller, i'm unsure). I think it had a soundblaster 16 card in it. First game I couldn't play on it was Spycraft since it was only capable of 256 colours. It cost us $3,000.

Today as a direct comparison to what i remember having in my old computer I'm running an AMD FX-8350 8core, 32gig RAM and a total of 8 terabytes of HDDs (3 2tb's and 2 1tb's) and it's soundcard equivalent is a soundblaster recon3d. it can play the hell out of Spycraft! it cost me around $1,400. There's other goodies on it of course but I'm trying to just compare directly to what i remember having instead of bragging. :P

We were an Apple Power Mac household until maybe 2005?

All I remember are constant crashes, Star Wars Droidworks and the Incredible Machine: Contraptions :D

And reams and reams of demo discs from Macworld magazine.

Happy times...

My first home computer was a Sinclair ZX80, with 4K of ROM and 1K of RAM. It didn't work and I returned it and got sent a ZX81 as a replacement, which had 8K of ROM, and still 1K of RAM (including display memory). That got upgraded to 16K. Didn't have sound, although I discovered that I could create a few tones by switching between 'fast' and 'slow' mode quickly (the height of the tone depended on how quickly).

My first PC (IBM compatible) was a 486DX2@66, 16GB of RAM (OS/2 didn't work that well with just 8MB; that 16GB SIMM cost me $700), and some other stuff. I think it had around 500MB of disk space. Most expensive PC I ever bought.

My current PC has a Phenom II X6 1090T, 16GB RAM, around 1.5TB in disks (not including external ones).

What on earth do you use the 32Gb ram for? :P

Same reason i bothered to get a soundcard, it was hella cheap! XD

Pentium 150mhz
16MB Ram
1.2GB hard drive
1MB SVGA card (S3 Trio)
1024 by 768 16 bit 14 inch monitor
Windows 95

I don't have a desktop anymore but my laptop is:

Intel i7 2630QM
12GB DDR3
250GB SSD + 500GBHDD
Geforce GTX 460m
17.3" 1920x1080 screen
Dual boot Ubuntu (with cinnamon) and Windows 7.

I've suggested it before, I'll suggest it again. Use half of that ram as a RAM drive, copy your game there, and enjoy speeds an SSD can only dream of ;)

1. My first electronic gaming device was one of those old LCD handhelds, I think it was called "Trojan Horse". It rewrote the legendary tale of the Trojan Horse, namely in that game the wooden horse was merely used as a sort of bridge, with which the enemies tried to enter the castle. Here's apparently a Wii emulator of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-MO9xFsd40#t=28

IIRC, the idea was to let the civilians run in (either via the bridge down, or the horse head), but kill the incoming soldiers by either a spear (if they come from up on top of the horse), or by closing the gate down so that they fall in the pit. I recall we had several hour gaming sessions with that game with my older brother.

2. My first gaming computer was Texas Instruments TI-99/4A.

3. My first PC was, IIRC, something like:

486DX/33MHz
RAM: either 4MB or 8MB, not fully sure
Some generic SVGA card, I think it was a Tseng Labs ET3000(?) based card?
HDD: I recall it would have been 120MB... Not fully sure.
Soundcard: Soundblaster Pro, a few weeks later getting also Roland LAPC-1 beside it.

I think the first games I ran on it were Red Baron, and Wing Commander.

4. My first gaming console was a Playstation (the older, bigger model).

Currently my fastest PC is an ASUS G75VW gaming laptop:
- NVidia Geforce GTX 670M
- some mobile Intel i7 CPU
- 8GB RAM
- DVD-RW drive (I don't feel I need a Bluray drive for anything)

So far I am happy with its performance, but then I haven't tried running COD: Ghosts on it. It runs e.g. The Witcher 2 and Crysis 2 pretty great, though.

(but for some reason lately I've been using my older Lenovo Thinkpad T400 for gaming, Baldur's Gate 2 and such, games from 2005 or so backwards; actually I was meant to check how well GTA San Andreas runs on T400, whether I would play it on it instead of G75VW)

And my fastest gaming console is the original, black XBox. At least I presume it is faster than the PS2 I have too.

My first PC was:
80386DX CPU at 40 MHz
4 MB RAM
212 MB hardrive
SVGA monitor
No Soundcard
MS-DOS 6.22 (Often run Windows 3.1, but it wasn't an OS)

My most up to date system is FUJITSU LIFEBOOK NH570-F3 laptop (purchased November 2010):
Intel Core i7-620M 2.66 GHz CPU
18.4 HD TFT glossy (1680x945) + external LG full-HD monitor for extended desktop.
8GB DDR3 1066MHz (upgraded last Summer from 6 GB)
1TB (2x 500GB) SATA II HDD, 5400 rpm
Blu Ray Recorder
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M with 1GB dedicated memory
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit on the first HDD.
Windows 8 Professional 64-bit on the second HDD (I'm going to upgrade to 8.1).

Edit: I don't use the laptop above for gaming. My gaming PC has much less horsepower:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200
2 GB DDR2 400MHz
1TB HDD SATA II WD Caviar Black (Windows XP Professional)
320GB SATA II WD (OpenSuse)
250GB SATA II WD (Fedora)
Gigabyte GeForce GTX650 OC with 1GB GDDR5
Creative Audigy 2 ZS

Let me rack my brain if I can even remember well enough...

Intel Pentium 60Mhz
8MB RAM
SVGA 1MB
500MB HDD
generic 16-bit Soundblaster clone
4x CD-ROM
MS-DOS 6.2 / Win 3.1
15" CRT monitor

Intel Core i7 2.4Ghz
8GB RAM
NVIDIA GTX 670MX 3GB VRAM
1TB HDD
DVD-burner combo thing
Win 8
17" lappie

My first computer was a Commodore 64. Later i bought an Amiga 500.

My first PC was a 486DX 50Mhz with 4mb ram, vesa graphics and a 130mb harddrive, with a 14" 1024x768 monitor.

Now i have a q9450 based pc with 6gb ram 1500gb hdd space, geforce 550ti, Asus Xonar d2x with a 27" 1080p monitor.

I am planning to upgrade to a sandy or ivy bridge-E hexacore with 16 or 32gb quad channel ram and a better graphics card. But I'll probably wait with that until The witcher 3 comes out - and Since Elite Dangerous is going to support Oculus Rift, it's almost certain i have to get one when the consumer version is released.