I was at a friend’s place this past weekend, and her computer is pretty clunky. It’s an IBM ThinkPad that she bought seven years ago, and it was used when she bought it. Might be over a decade old. Takes forever to open Explorer or to navigate pages, and does not have wireless capability. She’s a ‘starving student’, so that’s all she can afford. It works well enough for her to use for study and emails, and at least she’s off the dial-up.
My own PowerBook G4 is five years old. I could use a larger internal drive, but otherwise it’s fine for me. It took a while to render scenes when I was using it in a studio (compared to the owner’s dual-core – which was pretty good at the time – G5), but egregiously slow. I have an AirPort, and of course the computer has built-in wireless. It’s certainly faster than my 2001 iMac G3. (I put an AirPort card in that.) I’d like a newer, faster MackBook Pro; but I’m fine with what I have.
Six month old iMac 27" i7 with 8 gigs of RAM and a 2-TB hard drive. Runs OS X 10.6.4 and, in virtual machines, Windows XP, Windows 7, Ubuntu 10, Drupal 5.
I don’t know how old my two desktops are. Three or four years old maybe? They’re robust enough to run AutoCAD. I think both have a gig of memory and are running XP.
I don’t know about being spoiled; these computers are how I make my living and must be up to a certain standard to run engineering and CAD programs. This one says “Pentium 4, 2.99 GHz, 1.0 GB of RAM”. It has an NVIDIA GeForce graphics card in it.
I also have cable broadband which has spoiled me rotten.
ETA: Gee whiz Sunspace! I don’t feel very spoiled at all, now !!
I have a “movable computer”, which used to be a laptop but the battery’s gone bad, so now it only works while plugged in. That’s my work computer. It’s 2 years old: my current job is supposed to last for the next two years, so this computer is going to last at least that much. If I can go on using it on the next job, I will. Clients either require consultants to BYOL or ban us from doing it; the current one requires it.
Then there’s “the baby”. The baby is an e-book, bought last year when the other one’s battery died. The baby is used only when I need the mobility, such as having to bring a truly-portable computer to a meeting. I haven’t used it much, but you should’a seen the look in the Income Tax clerk’s face when she asked to see some records and I fired the baby up. I expect it will last for several years.
And I now want to buy, for my house, a mid-tower with bells and whistles. Mid because it will be easier to lug around the next time I move (which I do regularly because of work), but desktop and with lots of bells and whistles precisely so it will last long.
Yeah, I’m spoiled; computers are my biggest vice (in my brother’s words: “you’d be happy in a monk’s cell so long as it had internet” “and a microwave, I’d also need a microwave” “ah, true”). But heck, the first two are “a job requirement”: buying the baby to complement the dead-battery one was a lot cheaper than buying a new heavy, PITA-to-lug-around laptop. My back likes the baby better, too. Between late 2002 and April of 2009, I would have one computer: a laptop which served as my “everything machine” (one bought in 2002, replacement in 2005, replacement in 2008).
ETA: damnit, Sunspace, stop talking nerdy to me, I’m at work!
As soon as a computer turns 3 years old, I take it out back and shoot it. Dealing with failing hardware just isn’t worth the effort; best to nip all potential problems at the bud.
You don’t want me to mention that when I put the VMs into bridge mode, they all show up on the local network and then I can get them talking to each other?
The one I use most, for web surfing and other basics, is relatively new, replacing one that imploded two years ago. It’s nothing special, but compared to the one it replaced it’s zippy and smooth.
The other one I use for my 3D graphics and stuff used to be state-of-the-art in 2004, but has not been upgraded in many years and is now antiquated and inadequate. I dearly want to replace it, as it won’t even handle HD very well, but can’t afford to.
Both PCs running XP Pro.
Stats irrelevant and embarrassing.
Not. Mine is an ancient POS. I wrote out a whole post about how utterly shittacular it is, but that’s boring so I’m not going to post it. But I sincerely hate this computer and am saving my pennies for a new one ASAP
I have my eye on a nice little HP laptop. It will be new when I buy it- the first computer I’ll ever have that’s mine from the beginning, rather than used. I’m saving up and dreaming of the day I can play fairly basic games again or run a virus scan and play on the internet at the same time. The best part is, it’s inexpensive because of the “small” hard drive- which is about four times bigger than the one I have now.
I can’t wait. My problem now is that I’m torn between a) taking this horrible piece of flaming shit out back and jumping on it and smashing it against the concrete or b) trying to sell it for cheap. I would kind of feel bad selling this frustration engine to some unsuspecting person, but something like $100 would be useful to me and someone out there would probably be quite pleased to get a computer (that does still work) for that price.
I use a laptop that’s about three years old as my main computer, have a desktop around seven years old that serves as home server. Low-end DSL connection to the Internet. The laptop has 3 gigs of RAM and runs Vista (I have a student upgrade of Windows 7 that I still haven’t installed). I’m not a gamer (or at least not a current gamer), so it’s pretty low-end on graphics. Works great for video and MAME, though, and was competitive when number-crunching for a chaotic dynamics class I took last year.
The 1 gig desktop runs XP, has 3tb of HD storage on it (1tb internal, 2 external); it basically is a server for the laptop and home theater, as well as being the house torrent and eMule server. It serves through 802.11g, which is finally starting to be too slow for my needs; I’d like to upgrade my wireless router to 802.11n, but the laptop would need a dongle to receive it, and it’s old enough that I will wait on upgrading the WiFi until I’ve upgraded laptops. (The old laptop will probably take the place of the desktop as server, and the desktop will finally be retired.)
Overall, my equipment is starting to show its age, and really isn’t too impressive… but I still get amazed every once in a while by just how great I have it. I’ve been using computers since the 1970s, and remember the days of 10-minute long loading times, so it’s hard to complain when my video player takes a few seconds longer than it should to open a file (all while running multiple other programs).
I recently upgraded from a 2004 Dell. But even that computer wasn’t so bad; I had it up to 2 gigs of RAM and the best AGP video card I could still find. Couldn’t play many recent games but the stuff on the discount racks would work on it. My wife’s Gateway was even older, less upgraded and creakier and when my Dell got bumped down to “Family computer”, my son was thrilled that he could open Firefox in under 40 seconds.
The home desktop I’m typing on now celebrated its 10th birthday by having the hard drive die. Last October. It was harder to find a replacement 40GB IDE than you might expect. It does have a 17" flatscreen; the original CRT is long gone.
I really only use it as an SDMB & email terminal, plus some light MS Office work. The CPU is still fast enough that the wireless network is the bottleneck for online.
Although next time a part dies, this thing is history.
I’ve got one of the very first Intel iMacs and it’s starting to show its age. Think it’s getting to be close to six years old, which for me is a miracle - I’ve never had a PC before that went three years before being replaced or radically upgraded.
I’ve got my eye on the same i7 iMac that **Sunspace **has. More likely, by the time I round up all of my spare change, Apple will have updated it to an i9.
The other computer in the house is a wretched dodgy old Thinkpad T23 that takes ages to do anything. It’s so old that it has a Windows 2000 sticker on it.
Um, fairly spoiled. I have a self-built desktop with various parts ranging from 1 to 4 years old as I’ve had to replace a couple things along the way… either way, it will play pretty much any game out there at 1680x1050 at full or near-full settings. It’s got Windows 7 64 bit on a relatively clean install and it just zips at all the daily tasks. I also have a two year old, 13.3" Dell Studio XPS laptop that has a good bit of power on its own. It’s stood up well to pretty heavy use, everything from the couch to business trips to international vacations, and I haven’t exactly coddled it along the way.
However much I’d just love to upgrade, I expect to get another couple of years out of each of them. My desire for the latest and shiniest is tempered by the simple fact that they can handle everything I throw at them with no problems at all. Maybe a year from now I’ll be able to upgrade the desktop under the pretense of turning my current one into a full time media PC, but even that’s pushing it since I already have the second monitor output going to my HDTV, and I can stream stuff to my PS3, and my laptop has HDMI-out… yeah. Pretty spoiled.
My home computer is an eMac, either five or six years old (can’t immediately recall). There are times I wish it was a bit faster, but for most of what I do (web surfing, Email, some work on audio files, etc.) it’s still OK.
Weird thing that’s happening now…every few days, the monitor will just zap out. A narrow vertical band of color, and then the screen goes totally black. If I shut down and start up again, it comes back to life. I’ve also found that if I let it sit for a few minutes, it will also come back to life on its own. (If anyone has any ideas as to what could be behind this, I’d listen to them!)
As it’s an all-in-one unit, once the monitor goes for good, the computer is done. I can’t really afford a new one, but on the other hand I really can’t be without a computer. So a small part of me wants the eMac to breathe its last, so I can get a new iMac!
My previous computer (an HP Pavilion) was about 10 years old when it died last year. It still ran okay, other than not handling things like World of Warcraft that well, but the power supply popped and wiped the mobo as it died. I saved up what I could and added that to my income tax refund in February and ordered a new made-to-order from…well, I don’t remember exactly what site it was offhand. It’s off-brand…they didn’t just refurbish an old Dell or HP or anything. It was built from the ground up…4G RAM, 600+gig HD, super video card, 25-inch extra-wide LCD monitor. This thing runs WoW like it’s MS Solitaire.
I got my PowerBook in June 2005. ISTR that the Intel PowerBooks came out a few months later. Not having an Intel chip has been an issue twice: First, Tuckerfan invited me to join ‘joost’ or ‘joiced’ or something like that, and it didn’t support Macs. The other time was for the 2010 Olympics when I wanted to watch events live, and non-Intel machines wouldn’t work.
I have twin PowerBook G4s (last PowerPC edition, dual-layer model), vintage 2006. (If I have hardware probs, I can swap out the HD and keep going with the twin, I hate being deprived of my everyday computing environment while my regular computer is in the shop).
Processor isn’t very fast, but it supports 3 screens (the built in TFT, DVI out, and a CardBus card for a 3rd) which is important to me; can run Classic environment; nice native screen; no complaints really. I don’t need a lot of CPU oomph for what I do, so for the time being I have no pressing need to upgrade.
ETA: And when I do I’ll want twins again for the above-mentioned reason, so upgrading is expensive.
