I'm 18 (almost 19), I heard about Bitcoin back in May - June, just before it exploded. I was interested but didn't have the hardware. In late June - July I built my desktop, I built it with BF3 (yet I don't have Windoze) and Bitcoin in mind. Now I have a box with 2 6990's, 16GB of system RAM etc... Fortunately I also have "free" electricity here at my res. I'm a first year Computer science & network engineering student.

My first 0.01 BTC I ever made was from 4 days of pooled mining with a pair of dual-core Intel Xenons. Almost none of the new comers to Bitcoin will be able to claim they earned BTC from CPU mining.

Edit: 1700Mhash/s across the 2 6990s.