What is your "post-PC" plan?

[travelover]

I'm having a USB port installed in the back of my head, as a back up. For when I can't telepathically download my Facebook page.

 

[Major Tom]

My current desktop PC probably has a few more years left in it. If I make the move to full-time RV living in a few years, then I'll most likely get a laptop - with an external drive(s), for the 6-7 TB of music that I always want to hang on to.

If the RV plan falls through, I'll be sticking to a desktop PC for the large monitor, big keyboard, and the ease and relative low cost of expanding and replacing parts. I'll probably add a tablet at some point though, for reading in bed, on the sofa, and in the little boys' room

 

[W2R]

Right now, I have a desktop computer that I seldom use. When it craters, I do not plan to replace it. If it doesn't crater I may end up junking it anyway. It is still running Vista and that seems almost antique by now.

Mostly I use my laptop as my workhorse computer, and I will stick with that as my #1 main device. When it breaks, I will immediately get another, within 24 hours in fact. That is precisely what I did last October when my previous laptop fried. I use my laptop for hours every day and it is important to me that I have a laptop that is satisfactory to me at all times.

I have an iPad 2 which I enjoy, but I regard it as a toy, not a workhorse computer. If/when it breaks, I would probably buy an iPad 4 or whatever the latest is, but I wouldn't need to do that immediately since to me it is just a toy for games and internet.

 

[Janet H]

Desk workstation, laptop and tablet currently. My PC will need to be replaced in the next year and will be replaced in kind. It's about 8 years old and has had several parts replaced over the years; it's maxed on ram and it's time soon for an upgrade. I just ordered a new laptop from Lenovo and paid the [-]penalty [/-]bounty for the windows 7 downgrade. Next year I'll tackle the PC. Changing machines is a huge time suck...

 

[wmc1000]

I use 2 desktops and a laptop. When I decided to cut the cord for tv I bought a Core2duo IBM PC off ebay for under $200 to use as a dvr and internet, (HULU, etc),access. It is hooked up to our 55" HDTV and controlled with a wireless keyboard/mouse combo. It has been running non-stop strong with no changes for almost 3 years. I don't forsee having to upgrade it just replace a hard drive if it crashes.

My wife's desktop died about 1 year ago so I picked up a Core2duo dell slim desktop for $55 on ebay with windows vista and it is working fine also.

I had an older laptop running XP that was getting slower and slower with all the windows updates so about 6 months ago I installed LINUX and it once again runs at an acceptable speed for surfing the internet, checking emails and reading the daily newspaper!

 

[explanade]

I just got an iMac in October/November and I have my iPad and iPhone with me all day.

I do a lot of surfing on the iMac but also on iPad when away from the desk.

Got the iMac to host my large library of photos. Yes you can't beat desktops for storage and power, plus the big screen.

Also got an HP laptop a couple of months ago to use on trips, in addition to iPad. I shoot RAW so will be generating several gigs of new photos on each trip so the laptop is more or less for storing the photos and then merge back to my main iMac library.

 

[Midpack]

Just ordered a Dell XPS 8700** for $650 and Office 2013 Home & Business (DW edict) for $180. An iMac would have been a nice toy, but I'd have to learn a new OS-X & software and spend about $1800-2000 all up. Since I already use the desktop only 20% of the time and DW uses it never, might was well save $ and stick with the (Windows) devil we know. Now I need to research how best to migrate files (without bringing viruses, etc. across) and delete bloatware from the new PC.

I want to plug it into our family room TV with HDMI, but DW glared at me when I surfaced the idea.

Will be quite an upgrade from Vista and Office 2003 (believe it or not). We'll use the old 19" LCD monitor, printer, router, etc.

Funny, buying a new PC was always an event for me. Now it's truly just another appliance for us, unlike mobile devices. My next iPad will cost more than our new PC (if they put out the rumored 12.9").

** Win 8.1, 4th Gen i5, 8G RAM, 1TB HDD, NVIDIA GPU and all the desirable ports & doo-dads.

 

[sailor]

My current desktop PC probably has a few more years left in it. If I make the move to full-time RV living in a few years, then I'll most likely get a laptop - with an external drive(s), for the 6-7 TB of music that I always want to hang on to.

6 TB of music? Wow.
Uncompressed CD quality, that's about 10000 hours of music.
Do you listen to most of it? How do you organize it?

 

[ERhoosier]

I think I'll get another iMac, Windows 8 hybrid (tablet/laptop), and replacement smartphone...in whatever order my current devices decide to die 1st.

 

[Major Tom]

6 TB of music? Wow.
Uncompressed CD quality, that's about 10000 hours of music.
Do you listen to most of it? How do you organize it?

It's compressed, but to the lossless FLAC format. I also scan the entire CD booklet, jewel case tray insert, and even the CD. All these images are scanned at 300dpi and stored as lossless PNG files.

It represents my CD collection, which used to number ~10,000 but is now down to about half of that. I may hang onto some of the CD's but plan to have them all archived digitally in a few years hopefully. Doing this will help me to put less stuff in storage if I ever go the full-time RV route. It's not just the CD's, but also the racks they are in. It's a pain in the behind hauling all this stuff around when I move!

As for organizing it, I have CD racks lining the wall of my apartment. Everything is alphabetized and divided into separate sections - Rock/Pop/Hip Hop, Jazz, World, Blues, Folk, Reggae, Electronic, Classical, Holiday music. Each section has a separate section at the end for compilations.

No, I haven't listened to all of it yet. The funny thing is that when listening, I keep coming back to the same old albums, despite having a fairly sizable collection.

 

[eytonxav]

I want to replace my almost 8 yo PC desktop soon due to XP support ending and am leaning toward a 21.5" iMac with the newer processor, but pricing this out at MacMall is causing me to pause. I was hoping to dodge some of the malware encountered over the years on my PC, and it would be kind of fun to learn a new OS, but the cost differential is hard for me to justify. Feeling the same as Midpack.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

I have 3 Windows Laptops, all somewhat aging but you really do not need a new one providing they run Windows 7.

1 Lenovo W510 was my W#$rk machine when I was W#$rking, they let me keep it when I left.

2 Lenovo T60P this was the predecessor to 1 and I kept it too.

3 Lenovo T60P for DW Exactly the same as 2 but I purchased it on eBay for $150

I do not plan on getting rid of them. I also have a iPad Air that I do not use, I thought I sold it but the deal fell through. I plan on getting an Android Tablet to replace it some time when it sells.

 

[ERD50]

It's compressed, but to the lossless FLAC format. I also scan the entire CD booklet, jewel case tray insert, and even the CD. All these images are scanned at 300dpi and stored as lossless PNG files.

It represents my CD collection, which used to number ~10,000 but is now down to about half of that. ....

No, I haven't listened to all of it yet. The funny thing is that when listening, I keep coming back to the same old albums, despite having a fairly sizable collection.

Wow. I have only about 0.22 TeraBytes digitized, and I even seem to come back to the same ones!

I've scanned a few CD covers, I found it to be way too time consuming. I guess I'm going to be satisfied by searching the web when I want info on a particular CD. I sure wish this stuff was included in a a CD database somewhere - I found a few, but only the most popular CDs were populated.

I want to replace my almost 8 yo PC desktop soon due to XP support ending and am leaning toward a 21.5" iMac with the newer processor, but pricing this out at MacMall is causing me to pause. I was hoping to dodge some of the malware encountered over the years on my PC, and it would be kind of fun to learn a new OS, but the cost differential is hard for me to justify. Feeling the same as Midpack.

Simple solution. Linux. I've been running Ubuntu-Linux as my primary system for 3.5 years. With the 12.04 release, I switched to the Xfce desktop (AKA Xubuntu) and I really like it.

It would probably run fine on an 8 yo desktop, and it's easy to try it out. The next long Term Release comes out in April, so if you're in no hurry, you might want to wait for that (the pre-releases are still bleeding edge from what I've read).

PS - It looks like the OP (Midpack) got his answers so hopefully these little thread-jacks aren't a problem.

-ERD50

 

[Ronstar]

Just got a new iMac. That will cover me at home for a while. I'll assess my home needs about 5 yrs from now, and decide what best fits my needs at that time. But I can see getting another iMac or Mac Pro type of home computer. I need a big monitor.

Have a late model iPad for the road and for surfing on the couch while watching tv. Almost everything I need for the road, except I can't do much with the photos I'm taking until I get home. Might need a laptop for the road at some point, but I'm surviving so far without one. I can see using iPads into the future for mobile stuff

 

[explanade]

I want to replace my almost 8 yo PC desktop soon due to XP support ending and am leaning toward a 21.5" iMac with the newer processor, but pricing this out at MacMall is causing me to pause. I was hoping to dodge some of the malware encountered over the years on my PC, and it would be kind of fun to learn a new OS, but the cost differential is hard for me to justify. Feeling the same as Midpack.

I would make sure that the processor and other components like the RAM are the same as the PC that you're comparing to.

You definitely are paying a premium for a Mac. But they do tend to use the faster CPUs and GPUs.

If you were to get the 27-inch Mac, it has a pretty high quality IPS screen. When they first started making them, those screens were $1000 by themselves.

The other option to consider if you do get a Mac is to upgrade to a fusion drive, which is a 128 GB SSD paired with a 2 TB disk and the OS will move your system files and your most frequently accessed files into the SSD portion.

I wouldn't necessarily get the RAM upgrade through Apple, though the 16 GB RAM upgrade for my iMac is $140 at Amazon.

 

[braumeister]

I also scan the entire CD booklet, jewel case tray insert, and even the CD.

Funny. I realize you just wanted the label, but ...

This reminded me of something I heard during my w*rking days in the Pentagon. A certain government agency, which shall remain nameless here, realized that the wealth of historical data they were storing was on 80-column punch cards, and the card readers needed to use them were just about obsolete.

So they decided to archive the data in a more permanent format. All the millions of punch cards were scanned, and the scans recorded on microfilm.

You really can't make this stuff up.

 

[Midpack]

I want to replace my almost 8 yo PC desktop soon due to XP support ending and am leaning toward a 21.5" iMac with the newer processor, but pricing this out at MacMall is causing me to pause. I was hoping to dodge some of the malware encountered over the years on my PC, and it would be kind of fun to learn a new OS, but the cost differential is hard for me to justify. Feeling the same as Midpack.

You can see what conclusion I came to in post #32 FWIW. I had myself talked into a 21.5" iMac, but it really didn't make sense for us. Maybe next time in 5-6 years if desktops really reinvent themselves as some folks suggest (gestures, voice recognition, etc.). Seems unlikely to me...

The other option to consider if you do get a Mac is to upgrade to a fusion drive, which is a 128 GB SSD paired with a 2 TB disk and the OS will move your system files and your most frequently accessed files into the SSD portion.

I wouldn't necessarily get the RAM upgrade through Apple, though the 16 GB RAM upgrade for my iMac is $140 at Amazon.

I wanted a 1.1TB fusion drive, but hybrids are still newer technology, some experts are refraining for now and managing SSD and HDD manually/separately. And failure modes for HHDs and SSDs are different, could get tricky near the end. As for how much better it performs, would be a function of how much filespace you use. If somehow everything you had fit within 128GB, you'd have SSD performance. If however, you had closer to 1TB and way more than 128GB in OS and apps, ever diminishing returns in terms of performance.

You can indeed upgrade RAM on the current 27" but not on the current 21.5" for 99.9% of users. Good way to void your warranty or worse...so you just have to let Apple gouge away if you need more RAM on the 21.5."

 

[Walt34]

So they decided to archive the data in a more permanent format. All the millions of punch cards were scanned, and the scans recorded on microfilm.

This is fascinating. And their plan to retrieve this data if needed is...?

 

[AllDone]

I use the iPad for almost everything. When my elderly laptop dies, I'll replace with a cheap laptop attached to a real keyboard and a monitor like Erd50. That gives me the option of a laptop and it uses less power than a desktop. I just bought a NAS for the music files.

 

[explanade]

Anandtech did some benchmarking of fusion drives. Forget the exact conclusion but it was generally positive.

 

[Marita40]

I haven't had a desktop in years. When my trusty laptop dies, I'll replace it. I also have an android Asus tablet and an HP mini. All three get used frequently.

 

[foxfirev5]

Right now I'm using a super fast Samsung tablet/computer Intel Core 15, since I'm technically working. Loads of programs and storage. Nothing I need for my personal use.
I prefer a laptop for my limited personal internet and storage use. Last summer I bought a cheap <$300 Toshiba my DW and I use for our personal trips. Kind of old school but I strongly prefer the big screen luxury of a laptop.

 

[aja8888]

We have the following machines:

1. 7 year old XP desktop box I built (still running fine and use for just about everything). Maybe a candidate for an upgrade soon. Lost one HDD in the RAID array last year. Replaced it and rebuilt the file system from the good drive. All is good now.....

2. Dell desktop (Win 7) for DW - Cheepo Dell refurb store buy for ~$250.00 - it's an e-mail and Facebook machine (I do all the finance and banking on my homemade box).

3. Lenovo laptop (Win 8.1) - use in my consulting business travel. I hate this OS.

4. Asus Transformer (Android) = DD bought it for me for Christmas two years ago - It's primary use is as a remote for the Roku that seems to sit idle around here.

No IPads, other Apple machines. I built a Ubuntu PC and gave it to neighbor's son.

In the garage sits a Lenovo slim desktop running Win 7 I got for free. I'm not sure what to do with this cute little desktop yet.

 

[Midpack]

Not surprised as it follows the sales trends, but I find all the laptops instead of desktops for those who have tablets puzzling. I thought I'd buy a laptop to replace the old desktop. But you get a lot more for your $ with a desktop vs a laptop AND you can use the tablet when you need mobility. I don't see any advantage to a laptop unless you use it outside the home a lot.

It appears I'm going to have a desktop and tablet for the foreseeable future.

Again, not a criticism, I'm just different...

 

[Arifriekinel]

Not surprised as it follows the sales trends, but I find all the laptops instead of desktops for those who have tablets puzzling. I thought I'd buy a laptop to replace the old desktop. But you get a lot more for your $ with a desktop vs a laptop AND you can use the tablet when you need mobility. I don't see any advantage to a laptop unless you use it outside the home a lot.

It appears I'm going to have a desktop and tablet for the foreseeable future.

Again, not a criticism, I'm just different...

Where I come from with having laptops instead of desktops, my boyfriend and I, who live together, each have our own laptop with no desktop. His is a small netbook that we got a few years ago for a couple hundred bucks and mine is a 17 inch monster that I got in high school. We find they're just better for us to work with. We can take them to different rooms of the home so we don't have to work in the same place ever, and we can bring them elsewhere to work.

Tablets don't have the kind of processing power we usually need for work, and anything without a firm attached keyboard is a no go. We'd easily consider the laptops which can close and become tablets, but never a tablet with one of the roll away or laser projection keyboards, because we don't use desks and work in the bathroom, in bed, by the pool, etc, where our hands propped on the keyboard are what holds the screen up on our legs or the arm of the chair.

We're on the computers for well over 12 hours a day for work and play, which is too long to be in the same chair or spot. Sometimes we need to work in separate rooms or the same room, and that's just too much of a hassle to keep moving with desktops.