One of the bits of sage advice my husband gave me early on in our marriage is that you can't hold on to computers for sentimental reasons. This is actually quite true...in the age in which we live, technology changes so fast that in a few years it is no longer a reasonable thing to keep fixing a 15 year old computer.
When we got married, we didn't just combine the usual things....housewares, china, t-shirts, and automobiles in disrepair. We each brought a computer into the marriage too, both of us being geeks and such. Mine was a 486 (oooh....ahhhh....)with a whopping 3 MB of hard drive space, which was quite amazing at the time. It had something like 1 MB of ram...which means it probably wouldn't be able to run my email program in my current computer. When it was finally about to give up the ghost, I didn't want to let go, and my husband said, "You don't hang onto computers for sentimental reasons! Be reasonable!" Sniffle. It got me through college, and my first writing job. I was attached....until he gave me a newer computer that year for our anniversary (who needs diamonds?).
I forgot the old dinosaur.
I was thinking about her just this week, when my "new" computer was starting to show signs of age. You see for every human year, that's 7 in dog years, and 20 in computer years.
While working on a website for someone all of a sudden it just died.
I was freaking out in a serious way because like ALL of the graphics for this lady were on my computuer....all of the photos I had just edited....all of the documents...not to mention a few newly edited ebooks I am working on...can you say panic attack? I am so, so bad about backing things up...but at least most of it was on my external hard drive...just not the stuff I was working on when old bessie died.
I heard my sleepy husband stumble in behind me as I was still trying to figure out what to do...he said I screamed which I didn't remember doing, but obviously must have if I woke him up all the way upstairs...
What a guy! He pulled the hard drive out of my computer and put it into his (much slower) computer, and I was at least able to back everything up. Whew. Thank you Jesus. We make quite a team. I'm the software/programming/design girl, and he's the programming and hardware guy...it's a match made in heaven.
It was pretty good timing too, in a way. In a few days, Dell computers will stop giving you the option of having Windows XP on your computer, and you'll be stuck with Vista (ew). Given the fact that I have a significant investment tied up in graphics software that is not Vista compliant, that would be a nightmare....so with reluctance, I got an early birthday present that should be arriving next week...
I just wish I could fathom how my first computer cost more than my van...but had less memory and ram than my cell phone...but this new one that is arriving can do more than the other computers combined, but cost less than my monthly grocery bill. LOL
3 comments:
We started out with older computers (Remember the Atari? The Commodore?), and the Macintosh Classic. What a thrill to upgrade from a 40mb to an 80mb hard drive!
I'm so glad my children were able to experience it all, even though all of these were obsolete when we used them. They can't be fooled by the constant ads to upgrade....
I remember the commodore 64...we actually still had one when we got married, and the kids learned how to type on it. (I think I got it in 1983 or 1984, and the kids were still using it in 2001). I used a Mac Classic in college (I was one of the first people to take "Electronic Imaging" at the school of Art and Design at Northern Michigan University back in the late 80s)...we had to pay extra to use the laser printer, which was manned by paid staff (regular students couldn't touch it LOL)...my brother had the atari...
Speaking of...Did you happen to notice this past holiday shopping season they were selling "Atari Classic" at Walmart, looking the same, and preloaded with all of the games, for $100? I guess nostalgia sells. What did they do, hang on to the old Atari's that they had left over when the PC came out, and wait 25 years?
You are right about the upgrading...if we upgraded every time they say we need to, there are some seasons in which we'd be upgrading every year or even every month at the rate technology changes...but then you can't use your old software on the new computer sometimes...and so you spend even more...
I just wish it was cheaper or at least as cheap to buy parts to fix old computers, or to upgrade them, instead of buying a whole new system. The power thing for my computer would be $500....but a laptop with more power is $399...go figure.
I enjoyed this so much that I put a link to my post today here
Kitten Yarn
My husband is a computer guy, a programmer with a collection of commodore 64s, among other things. Those are funny to remember, too. I remember typing in the code for the text games we played :)
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