Matthew Sparby40 years ago today, I woke to find this under the Christmas tree. It's not an overstatement to say that my life was changed forever.
Joe@Cloudscout I had the same experience 44 years ago. A Christmas gift that changed my life.
Big George@Cloudscout nice. I also had one. Great machine. Had a Sinclair ZX81 before that. Changed my life.
Les Orchard@lmorchard I wish I had photos of that day. It's possible some exist. My aunt and uncle hosted Christmas that year and one of these days I'm going to go through old photos with them to hopefully find some.
Nico Erfurth@Cloudscout @koehntopp I wonder what todays equivalent would be. I don’t mean „get them a new PC“. But what could be the one thing which has the potential to have such a drastic effect. For us it were the c64s and Amigas. What technology could we give them to have a similar lasting effect. Most likely it’s going to be something we don’t really understand and might even have sentiments against.
koehntopp ~ :@masta @Cloudscout
One of the things that glued us to them was the absence of anything that was remotely as cool and interesting as computers, plus the absence of all the distraction that is streaming and social media.
If you mastered computers, you could do something nearly noone of the grown-ups could.
@koehntopp @masta The real obsession for me came when I got a modem and started calling BBSes.
Cybso 
(he/him)@masta "Most likely it’s going to be something we don’t really understand and might even have sentiments against."
Why is the first thing that comes into my mind chatgpt?
Patrick Morris Miller@Cloudscout You too, eh? My next birthday my grandmother gave me a cartridge for a typing tutorial game. I was so peeved and I'm so glad she did.
@kentenmakto To this day, I can't touch type on a C64. I'm quite fast touch-typing on a PC/Mac keyboard but when I use a Commodore, I revert to hunt-and-peck.
erica_sea55@Cloudscout I replaced my Sinclair ZX Spectrum with one of these, soooo cool (well to my late teenage self)
@erica_sea55 I didn't get a ZX Spectrum until I was 44 years old... mainly because I live in the US. But now I have several and I love them. It's fun to learn a new platform decades after it was popular.
Jeff Anthony@Cloudscout Greatest home computer ever. You had to know how computers work to get it to do anything, and once you learned the possibilities were endless. I remember magazines would have lines of programming you could type and put together your own games at home…
Adam Trickett 
@Cloudscout my best friend got one, we couldn't afford a #C64, or any other computer. My step-father got an unexpected tax rebate the following spring and I got my C64 the following year.
I can also say it changed my life and while I did biology at uni, it was the mathematical end, and programming got me my first job after uni where I met my wife. Today my job is programming full time, and I still love it.
This year I've even started to help teaching new employees at work.
Henning Buddenbaum
Deine Freunde - C64 (offizielles Musikvideo)
MadMoses@Cloudscout Same. 1984 was a good year.