When to buy a new computer?

[AHunter3]

@Pork_Rind

As far as the hard drive swapping goes, I get it now. I have a similar philosophy, but approach it differently. I have two backup drives. One for Time Machine that handles the hourly differential. Time Machine is great for going back and picking up accidentally deleted files, but is a bit cumbersome for full restores as it’s thorough but slow. For the full restore, I have SuperDuper make a full bootable clone twice a day. It’s actually faster to have SuperDuper clone from the backup to laptop #2 than to open both machines and swap, I suspect.

Yeah, it would be. But I usually deploy Laptop #2 as a testbed server. So the auxiliary computer’s HD isn’t really empty so much as it’s functionality is expendable if I need it to be my main computer while Laptop #1 is in the shop.

I got pretty fast with HD-swapping, although I miss the days of my WallStreet G3 Series laptop where swapping hard drives took about 90 seconds.

[AHunter3]

@Pork_Rind

I’m not sure if this suits your needs, but VMware Fusion now lets you virtualize 10.5 and 10.6 installs within Lion. Could be a best of both worlds situation for you.

And to continue the hijack, why would you need to swap hard drives between two identical machines? I feel like there’s got to be a better way to do what you’re looking for here.

I hear that VMWare has removed that option as of version 4.1.1.

[Pork_Rind]

@AHunter3

I hear that VMWare has removed that option as of version 4.1.1.

Thanks for the update. I guess I won’t be updating my copy for a while.

[Hari_Seldon]

I usually replace my laptop after 3 - 4 years. But my wife’s has a desktop that she bought in 1999 (that years, the government was encouraging Y2K replacements by allowing 100% depreciation in one year). It runs XP and she says she will give it up over her hard cold body. She will not consider any of Vista, Win-7 or the forthcoming Win-8. She replaced the hard drive once and it still does whatever it did when it was new.

[Mr_Downtown]

I was in the same position as you—at least I was three months ago. An iBook with one of the last PPC chips and increasingly feeling left behind. Spurred by an upcoming trip, I snatched up one of the MacBook Air refurbs from the Apple store for $700. Solved all my problems: fast, modern, weighs only 1 kg, a beautiful object from the future. At home it gets a big monitor and regular keyboard, but I can also grab it and put it in my smallest backpack. Hell, it’ll fit in some of my coat pockets. I did grab one while Snow Leopard was still easily available because I’m tied to some software (FreeHand) that won’t run on Lion.

I can’t answer the general philosophical question about when to buy a new computer. But if you’re still using a Mac with a PPC chip, the answer is much simpler. Now.

[drachillix]

@Hari_Seldon

It runs XP and she says she will give it up over her hard cold body.

Any shop can load XP onto a new system, I have done half a dozen in the last year for people who needed XP environments for stuff. Not always easy to find drivers but usually enough for the application in question.

[brittekland]

A couple of good reasons… usually when I start having difficult controlling my urges to do something like that is when I get a new one.
Have to say converting to Mac definitely saved me mucho brain cells.