Computing was not something I really took notice of until around 1988 or 1989 when we got our first IBM XT clone PC without the math coprocessor for our business. The old XT would take almost a full day to run payroll for 18 employees. Dad was so fed up with personal computers and how inefficient they were he swore we would never own another one once that one broke down. As I seem to recall it used DOS 4.0?
I recall being somewhat fascinated watching text come in, O N E L E T T E R A T A T I M E on the first modems for public use. “Oh, neat, we can communicate over the phone line”. Kinda absurd really.