I had a fascinating if rather rushed 46 hours in Beijing recently, getting a sneak preview of the 2008 Olympic venues - and meeting the IT team tasked with getting the technology infrastructure ready for the opening on 8 August.

The venues I saw are impressive - particular the Water Cube aquatics centre. I'm hoping (though not too optimistic) London can come up with something to rival it when it's our turn to host the event.

Follow this link for photos of some of the Beijing venues and the IT infrastructure that will underpin them.

And overlooking the Water Cube and the 'Bird's Nest' Beijing National Stadium is the home of the technology team and their testing lab. Perhaps the idea was that views of the venues would help concentrate the minds of the techies involved.

As silicon.com has recently spent a lot of time writing about one mega-project - Heathrow Terminal 5 - that didn't go according to plan, I was keen to hear from the Olympic team about the hurdles they have to leap to make sure they didn't suffer a similar fate.

Even though it is still months to the games, the IT team is in the process of freezing the software - getting to the point at which no more changes to the code will be allowed so that they aren't derailed by unexpected, last-minute problems. And testing and technical rehearsals, which started long ago, continue in earnest.

Of course, the Beijing Olympics hasn't happened yet, so we don't know how successful these preparations will be. But it's a project we'll be keeping close tabs on in the run-up to the games, so we'll soon find out.

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Check out our exclusive CIO Agenda research which finds out what tech chiefs are really planning this week, and the accompanying video here. Still want more? Check out the Naked CIO who this week is giving a controversial view of open source software.

Here at silicon.com we recently, rather unexpectedly, unleashed a tidal wave of tech nostalgia by asking the deceptively simple question: what was your first home computer?

This question formed the basis of our latest reader poll - which saw the ZX Spectrum voted as the most popular of the 10 pieces of antique hardware we listed.

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That meant beating other classics such as the Apple II, BBC Micro, my own personal favourite the Amstrad CPC464, and others including the Commodore 64 and Dragon 32.

For some younger members of the team we had to explain that in the golden age of home computers the idea was you could actually use these - at the time very expensive - pieces of hardware to create your own programs.

Magazines dedicated pages and pages to hundreds of lines of code that enthusiasts could use to program their own games and other applications.

In fact, even now I can remember the hot flush of rage I felt when I couldn't get a game to work after spending hours every night for a week inputting a program. Even now I'm convinced the mistake was in the code, not my typing. I also nursed a bitter envy of C64 owners, which I still harbour until this day.

But that kind of frustration aside, these home computers launched the careers of many UK tech entrepreneurs - and are still warmly remembered by many others, whether they ended up with careers in IT or not.

I'm not sure whether the games consoles that followed will lead to the same flowing of innovation or fond remembrances in 20 or 30 years' time.

And the poll wasn't the end of the story. While many approved of the ZX Spectrum being crowned king - including one reader who keeps his machine in a display case - we also received comments from antique computer fans up in arms that their beloved hardware of yesteryear wasn't included in the poll.

Where was the ZX81? Where was the Commodore PET? What about the NewBrain, Nascom or Tandy TRS-80?

All I can say is that the next time we look at the history of computing - and frankly it's a compelling issue so I'm sure we'll be revisiting soon - we'll make sure we get as many of these old favourites involved as possible.

And just in case home computing nostalgia isn't enough for you, I propose a new question that should keep armchair historians arguing for some time. What was your first business computer?

Post your comments below and if we get enough suggestions we might even run a poll on that too.

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Find out what the priorities of your CIO are this year, have a look at the latest CIO Jury discussing the insider security threat, and read Seb Janacek on why he loves his Mac.