Ditching it for a newer, flashier model

January 3, 2010 at 5:18 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

This computer is over 10 years old now.  Although I replaced the hard drive about 6 years ago, so maybe it’s officially only 6. Who knows?  I bought the exact same hard drive configuration, so I say 10.

Either way, it’s served me remarkably well, and for far longer than I expected.  I did a lot of research into the various kinds of hardware components available at the time, and bought it from one of those places that will let you select each component separately, and totally customize your computer.  So I was able to get something that would stay current–at least for my anticipated uses–a bit longer than the average 3 year lifespan.  After that, it was just a matter of not minding too much if it ran a little slow, and could only run two or three applications at a time without freezing up.

But when I can’t run Firefox and iTunes at the same time, that’s where I draw the line.  And it’s been like that for about 6 months or so now.  At first I was waiting for Windows 7 to come out.  I’ve been running XP for a decade now and would like to continue the pretense that there’s no such thing as Vista.  Then I couldn’t find a computer I liked.

It’s pure commitment-phobia.  I would go to Costco, and see a whole host of affordable, up-to-date, perfectly good computers.  And I’d stand there dithering around, comparing them all, liking one thing about one of them, and something else about another, but not finding any with everything I want except ones that are overpriced and cluttered with all sorts of other gadgets and gizmos and programs I don’t want.

It’s quite the metaphor, now that I think about it.

I hadn’t even been able to decide between a desktop and a laptop.  My laptop is totally dead, but I really want to replace it with a netbook instead of another laptop.  And I can’t justify buying a netbook when what I really need is MORE power and functionality, not less.  So, I finally decided, desktop first.  Then when Google comes out with their OS next fall, if it’s any good, I’ll buy a netbook at that time.

So having made that decision, I was surfing around yesterday looking at what’s out there.  Still not entirely liking anything I saw.  You know, lots of memory but a low-end processor, or good memory and processing speed but still running Vista, or a crappy graphics card, or a high-end graphics card but a stingy hard drive.  Yes, I’m picky.  When I buy something, I want to be happy with it, and not wonder if maybe that other one would have been a better choice.

Fortunately there are several companies that will still let you customize your computer, so I ended up going to one of them and just building what I wanted from scratch.  It was much cheaper this time around, thankfully.  And I got everything I wanted–or at least, as much of what I wanted as I was willing to pay for–and just as importantly, nothing that I didn’t want.

Sadly, this only works with computers.  But at least my computer and I will live happily ever after.