At home, my Desktop computer is a Core 2 Quad Q9650 (3.00 GHz), pared with Windows 7 and a solid-state drive. The SSD is where I put all the applications. Files and storage go on a second, traditional hard drive. With the SSD, all the boot-up applications (Virus software, USB drivers, Network connection) take about 5 seconds to load after the Windows 7 welcome screen goes away.
At work, my desktop computer has a traditional hard drive, Windows XP, and a very slow network connection.
Considering how frustrated I get with my work computer on Monday mornings, I’d say pretty spoiled.
Start saving for a new computer. The CRT is losing horizontal sweep and the image is collapsed into what old-time TV repairmen would call a “drive line.” There’s no safe or practical DIY repair for this.
A few weeks ago I replaced my 5 year old computer with a shiny new Alienware Aurora. Hopefully in another 5 years I’ll still be using it and bitching about its outdated performance. For now, I’m nicely spoiled.
Wait, so are we trying to out-do each other for outdated, slow machines?
FWIW, I’ve got a hell of a lot of firepower at home, but that’s because I work at home, and most of the hardware does not belong to me. So I’m spoiled rotten, I guess?
After briefly using my friend’s machine I realised how spoiled I am. Even though my machine is five years old and I wish it were better, it’s still fast enough for me. (Incidentally, I use this one for telecommuting. It’s faster than the PC I connect to at my desk at work. Even the G3 is fast enough for telecommuting, though it suffers by comparison for general surfing with its 450 mHz processor.) I can surf/work from the couch, or I can go into the guest room and do it from there. I could set up a table outside if I wanted to. And my cable Internet access is loads faster than the DSL at the office. My friend plugs away on an ancient computer that she can’t even take to class because it’s not wireless. (I suppose she could take an Ethernet cable, assuming there is an outlet.)
Is this thread a ‘race to the bottom’? I didn’t mean it to be.
I’m another person who can get by on oldish hardware. I don’t know how long I’ve had this computer off the top of my head but the BIOS date is 2004 and it’s not the original, it’s an update. It’s a 2GHz AMD Athlon.
I’m an ex Computer Science prof and a hardcore computer user. But I also know how to keep it clean of cruft and well tuned so it’s faster than the newer machines that I get to clean up where the idjit users loaded them up with crapware and such.
This is not at all uncommon among Computer Science profs. A few have the urge for the latest and greatest, but many know how to get more done with less.
The only task I regularly do that sucks cycles is video conversion. But I usually time that so that I’m off doing something else for a while. So I feel little need for a new PC other than I know getting replacement parts like an EIDE drive or an AGP video card might be an issue.
My desktop machine is a Quad-core G5, which is still plenty fast, considering it’s almost 5 years old.
My laptop is a 2.0GHz Core-Duo White MacBook, which is also fast enough for my needs.
However:
We have a dedicated Mac Mini for our Media server.
My Wife has an 20" iMac G5
and a MacBook
and a 12" Powerbook
We have a PowerBook that’s dedicated for Kitchen use.
I also have a NetBook running OS X.
And lastly, a Thinkpad for microcontroller programming.
So, in a house with two people, we have 8 computers in regular use, so I guess we’re pretty spoiled.
I figured this was the case. When I describe this phenomenon to others, it’s in those terms…sort of like when you would turn off an old-style tube TV and the image would collapse into a tiny white dot.
Even though there’s color and the shape is different, this is what it reminds me of.
As the other 4 members of my family updated to Macs, I kept inheriting their old PCs. The last one was a 5-ish yr old Dell. Took forever to boot up, but was fine for my meagre needs. Just replaced it a month or so ago with a Mac after it crashed for the second time in a few months. I could afford it and keeping the old one wasn’t worth the hassle to me.
I’m limping along with a 700 mhz laptop with 2 gigs of ram. The processing speed is fine but the boot time is harsh due to all the programs on it and the firewall. My other computer is about the same.
I use mine till they die. Just got an acer netbook a few months ago and an emachine this past week because an old HP bit the dust. It always was a POS so I wasn’t sorry to see it go.
We have another PC we got from a tech dude who came highly recommended. He built it for us and it has all kinds of bells and whistles but it’s always in the shop so I don’t think we’ll be doing that again.
I don’t think I’m particularly spoiled, we go for the cheapest thing that will do the job most of the time.
I consider myself spoiled because I have 3 computers, my wife also has one. I could also probably cobble together a 5th one with spare parts.
None of them are top of the line, and one is an antique, but I think I’m “spoiled” in the sense that I feel I need all of them, even if the reasons aren’t overwhelmingly persuasive.
Like DChord568 I’m using a G4 eMac. It dates from 2003 and drives a second 17" CRT monitor.
Still, I’m picky enough that I won’t use my slightly newer Windows XP machine, except under desperate circumstances. (Mainly because the on-screen fonts have always looked dreadful.)
Business had been bad for the last three years and now it’s picked up, which is a double-edged sword. The eMac handled PhotoShop 7 and Illustrator 10 with no problems. But when I had to move to Creative Suite 4 – to do work for new clients – things started to crawl.
LIke a couple other people here I’ve got my eye on the 27" iMacs, although apparently their native resolution delivers a very tight pixels-per-inch setting. I already have trouble seeing the palettes in CS4 and wouldn’t want them any smaller.
I read warnings against using LCDs at less than native resolution, but my daughter’s 20" iMac still looks sharp at reduced resolutions.
Rather spoiled. Core2duo quadcore, 8 gigs of ddr3, 500mb hd with a 2tb Network storage device for the NAS. Nvidia Geforce GTX 295 running dual 23" monitors on a stand sitting in front of my lazyboy. There is also a small box on the network that runs the 50 inch lcd and has access to the NAS for movies, netflix, etc.
[ul]
[li]Newer Win7-64 box (2009): Quad-core Q9550 (Yorkfield), 2.83ghz, 8gb RAM, nVidia GeForce 8600 GTS (I need to nag work about getting me a nVidia CUDA card), 30" monitor.[/li]
[li]Newer Mac Pro box (2010): Dual quad-core Xeon (Nahelam) 2.26 ghz, 16GB RAM, nVidia GeForce GT120 (also should upgrade this graphic board), 27" monitor.[/li]
[li]Older Win XP box (2006): Dell 690, dual dual-core Xeon 5160 (Woodcrest) 3ghz, 4gb RAM, Radeon x1950, 23" monitor. This is my web surfing, photography, e-mail, whatever machine, still used for non-performance-critical work.[/li]
[li]Kitchen computer (2006), iMac 17" Core Duo, 4gb RAM[/li]
[li]My wife has a Dell desktop ca 2009, I don’t recall the specs, but she’s not hurting. 2GB RAM, built-in video[/li]
[li]My laptop (2010): Dell Studio 15" Core i3, 4GB RAM[/li]
[li]My son has a cast-off work machine of mine that my work doesn’t want back except to recycle. Dell 670 (ca 2006), dual 3ghz Xeon 4GB RAM, Radeon x1950, 20" monitor.[/li][/ul]
I’d like to get a more-core main 64-bit Win7 box and cast off the dell 690, but otherwise I’m not hurting. The kitchen iMac is getting long in the tooth, but its mostly fine for web browsing and my kid playing Flash games and YouTube.
Spoiled to some degree. Two of us and over the weekend we had 7 computers here. They range from an old clunker still running ME to a quad core i7 chip. The laptop we got to take overseas but we were also gifted an Asus Seashell notepad so we don’t really need the laptop. The other more recent machines are still pretty powerful but aging a bit.
Represent! I bought an open-box Aurora and am flat amazed (and dismayed) and how little I can affect the CPU monitor. I just got finished Hackintoshing it, and I suspect that’s the OS that’ll stick.
Also:
I have a 2009 17" Mac Book Pro, it’s the officie’s, but it sees a lot of personal use, too. A couple of servers in the basement, an Acer Aspire One, the Wife’s got another $500 Acer, and there’s a Pentium 4 doing web duties at a friend’s co-lo.
I’m down to this after just offloading a lamp-shade iMac and a DL360 server this weekend.
