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What are ways to figure out how old my computer is?

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Try finding receipt or something. If there is warranty check in manufacturers site, you can use that to find it out. – Olli Feb 28 '11 at 9:55
I got that from my employer. No nothing attached. I think in general it's an interesting question. – Ronny Brendel Feb 28 '11 at 9:57
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you could use carbon dating – barlop Feb 28 '11 at 10:00
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What is your mental model of "my computer"? Do you think there is a special date it was born? Do you need the date of the first component that was built for constructing the final set of components that eventually resulted in a complete entity one would call "a computer / a desktop pc / a server"? Or do you need the date the entity first came in contact with electricity? – initall Feb 28 '11 at 10:18
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I don't understand this question... you know the hardware has labels that tell you when it was built right? You could also pull product numbers and search them in google. How is it possible for us to tell what you have when we cannot see it? – Kyle Feb 28 '11 at 15:41
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5 Answers

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There is no definite way know when was the first time someone booted the machine , but what you can do is download CPU-Z and check the motherboard model no.
Then find its release date and if you can get the date for when the manufacturer stopped making the model you have a date range for the machine .
Usually people don't really change the motherboard so this is your best bet .
In case you are using a branded machine you can always contact the manufacturer with the machine's serial number and they might provide you the manufacturing date.

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Are you running Windows? Go to command prompt and enter "systeminfo | more". Then look for the line items that have Original Install Date for when the OS was installed, system manufacturer, system model, processor type, BIOS version, etc. Depending on exactly why you want to know how old your computer is, the above information should be able to provide it or a sufficient enough answer by getting further information from the manufacturer (e.g. processor was initially released in Month/Year).

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Depending on your BIOS, you may have a date that it was installed on the system, this is essentially the "birth date" of your computer. I think most IBM clone machines (ie. non-mac) use Phoenix BIOS now, the date is the very last line on the POST screen.

If you are using Windows, this will also work (it says Win2k, but it works on XP): HOW TO: Determine BIOS Date on a Computer Running Windows 2000

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up vote 1 down vote

If your computer was purchased from one of the major PC manufacturers (ie: Dell) then you can type in your service tag/serial number to find out when the computer was purchased.

As others have mentioned, this doesn't take into account any newer upgrades or pieces installed post-purchase, but would give you a good place to start with.

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up vote 0 down vote

My first take, which succeeded on Ubuntu/Linux was using

$ lshw

You can find the creation date of the volumes in this listing. It is not exactly the first time you use your computer, but the time where you (re)partioned your hdd.

(ps: I'd be very interested in solutions in other ways and on other platforms)

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What if the computer is 10 years old but the HDD is only 6 years old? Wouldn't this give an inaccurate reading? – Joe Taylor Feb 28 '11 at 11:16
Repartitiong? I've done that a hundred times on my machine, so this would be extremely inaccurate. – Simon Sheehan Mar 8 at 0:32
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