I can't afford to upgrade often, or if I can I can only afford little bits, so I drive my hardware into the ground. I used a 68030 Macintosh paired with a 486DX2 PC until 1999, I used a 450 mhz Pentium II, 320 MB RAM, with Windows 98 until 2005. Then I got an Athlon 64 2.2ghz and 1GB RAM, and I'm still using it now. I've only upgraded with an extra 512 MB of RAM and a very cheap video card to get off the onboard graphics, as well as a second hard drive (200GB) that I didn't pay for because I pulled it from a dead P4 I received. It looks like I'll be using this thing until at least 2011 due to my financial situation, when I'd like to finally plunge and get something nice. Lucky for me that it still works kinda well for its age due to decent upkeep, although it's starting to fall behind for anything that needs decent performance, like games.

I named my first external hard drive "Flying Toaster" due to its portability and my love of the old After Dark screensavers... it died of severe overheating, what a coincidence. I named its replacement "Not A Toaster"... so far so good. As for my computers, I have a couple random names but no common theme and definitely no effect on their performance. My main one is called Kefka after the Final Fantasy VI character. I have an old Gateway named Moo and a Dell from 2003 that is named Powerhouse because it is somehow STILL able to play new games on reasonable settings. My old 486 is named Senior Citizen and my equally old Mac is named Crapple because it is very slow and useless. I used to name ALL my hard drives, but then I stopped. I had on my old Pentium 2 setup a 12 gig named Dust Bunny and a 40 gig named Death Star. I should get back into naming!

Macs are indeed great for kids. I myself started out on an old 68030 Mac (with System 7) when I was about 2 1/2. My parents put on some nice educational software and I was ready to go for about a year and a half. Once I learned to read I also took time to explore the Mac's interface which was simple enough to understand even with basic reading ability. I started checking out other CDs we had laying around, such as a demo software CD where I discovered what real games were like. By 4 I'd mastered the thing and was about as equally proficient as my parents! From there I moved on to a relative's 486 and taught myself some basic DOS commands so I could load the game Lemmings off a floppy. I also took time to learn how Windows 3.1 worked on there. Then around 8 we got a modem with a new computer and I began exploring the Internet. Now at 16 I sit here typing on Slashdot.
So really, a Mac (using the classic system software) is a great starting point. It worked for me. Of course, your mileage may vary-- I am actually a rather gifted fellow and a fast learner so that may be why I was able to figure things out at such an early age.