How long? I have since the 1.5 area. I guess i’m kinda old here. but we will do versions today.
Since 1.67 and a full head of hair…
I know I started using it before there was a WIndows version, and before the “C-Key era”. But I don’t remember exactly what version I started with.
since the beginning:
rwxr-xr-x 0/65534 Jan 19 02:19 1998 blender_5.3_1.23/blender
(ah… the good old pre-PEECEE days)
much later after the 2.23… i guess! he he! 
ps:i don’t remember,but it is not much.
I don’t remember when the windows version came out, but I’ve been using Blender since about then. I only really got into it with Blender 2.0 though, with the advent of the controversial realtime engine (which just happens to be one of the COOLEST things EVAR).
First downloaded, I think it was 1.37 and I was totaly baffled by the interface. I think it was in 1997 or early 98, I was using a p120 with 64megs of ram dual booting win/linux, I love my PowerBook 
.
a p120 with 64 meg of memory! this crap computers that they sell us this days!!!.. i got a 750 mhz with only 64 megs of Ram…lots of mhz so little memory!!! damn! :-?
1.7 had just come out… Was that June of 99? I don’t remember?
i’m not as old a blender user as some of you are, ive been using blender since version 2.12
i remember the day that i saw the interface, and read b@rt’s pdf on “how easy and intuitive” the interface can be used… “YEA RIGHT!!” was my response: i didnt get a thing… i didnt even know how to rotate around in the viewport!!
I was a bryce user before i got blender, but once i began to understand how to use it, i never went back to bryce, although its unbeatable at terrains.
so long,
Tom
Since 1.80a for Windows came out. Skates showed it to me and it was the best thing I had ever seen! I still had my P-166 MMX with 32 MB RAM and no OpenGL. Or was it my overclocked 486?
how do I use blender?
about a month before 1.80a, whatever that version was.
Martin
1.8
Haven’t cut my hair since 
Before that I used Mechanisto
- pofo
mmmm… v1.8
I still like the old interfase better. The buttons did not have the rounded corners. They could be displayed smaller and still have more text in them. Very important on the 800X600 MAX LCD I had on my laptop when I got 1.8
begin of 2000. after buying “das blender buch” I learned how to use it. think it was 1.8 or 1.7?
MiGa
There sure is alot of peeps whom have been using Blender longer than me :o … but only 2 peeps older than me eh? wow… 8)
keep on blending!!! 
8) 8) 
Since 1.68 .
HI all,
downloaded my first blender: Feb. 1999
daleI don’t know why that has to be how I remember it, but I keep thinking that it was around the time “Hollow Plot”… er, “Hollow Script…” sorry, “Sleepy Hollow Man…” all right, all right, “Hollow Man” came out. For some reason, I downloaded 1.80 first, then after a while I got 2.04. I guess I wasn’t interested in game creation then. I still don’t think it’s the best part of Blender.
Ah, yes… I was confused, not being able to make anything more complex than a cube… not able to get why all my images were totally black. Now I still might make cheesy, little-time-invested models, but I can light things well. I can make the light look good in a room and still have shadows without a spotlight-like light coming down. I can make the images look kind of good through materials and lighting. I only wish I could get a prism-like effect with normal lighting…
Back to the story of getting started. I was still confused, so I went and got a tutorial off the internet at Blendermania. It got me started, and I’m now obsessive with getting things right in Blender. Is that good or bad?