The High Cost of Modern Living

[crispus]

In all honesty I don't see why you'd need to do this. We have a computer from 10 years ago.
Need to for basic web browsing and communication tasks? Probably not.

On the other hand, if you spend a significant amount of your recreation time/budget on computer games, if you like managing all of your media digitally, or if you have take-home work from your job or school that requires you to be able to access the latest versions of popular productivity software on your home PC, then you're looking at probably needing a new one every few years or so. Of course, two of those are luxuries/hobbies, and the other may not be something a person would have to worry about after retirement, but still, there are some reasons for people to upgrade on a regular basis.

Photography is a hobby of mine and I find myself buying anew computer ever 3-4 years. Of course that was before my forced semi-retirement. Now I will think long and hard before replacing my electronics. My cell phone is still paid by my employer and with data it runs about $80 per month for my iPhone. I used to think nothing of buying new software and apps, but now I make do with as much free stuff as I can find or I find that I really don't need the convience of a costly product. I love the latest and greatest in technology, but I know that the build up before I buy is greater then the satisfaction of owning it.

 

[myself]

Need to for basic web browsing and communication tasks? Probably not.

On the other hand, if you spend a significant amount of your recreation time/budget on computer games, if you like managing all of your media digitally, or if you have take-home work from your job or school that requires you to be able to access the latest versions of popular productivity software on your home PC, then you're looking at probably needing a new one every few years or so. Of course, two of those are luxuries/hobbies, and the other may not be something a person would have to worry about after retirement, but still, there are some reasons for people to upgrade on a regular basis.

Josh

Try downloading just Puppy Linux. It can fit it in a 256M thumb drive with about 120M of space free and the thumb drive is bootable. The browser which supports HTML 4.x & CSS 2.x, can also bring up the Flash websites that I bother to go to. Full email client capabilities are already there. I can open/edit Word/Excel documents (which include Excel functions, etc.). I don't use it often, only because the laptop is much more convenient than the desktop PC that I only have Puppy Linux installed on.

I don't play video games on it (that's what our WII is for).

 

[Joshua]

Try downloading just Puppy Linux.

You know, I have an old laptop sitting in a box at home right now. I think the hard drive is shot on it, but I've never gotten around to getting a new one for it because I don't like the fact that I'd be paying the same price for a small, obsolete hard drive (ATA5 interface) as I would be for a brand new, high capacity one!

Maybe I could try something like Puppy Linux and see if it would run that. It could mean I'd have one more useable machine around the house. Not a bad deal. I bet my older girl could do her homework on it without having to fight her sister for the other desktop.

Thanks for mentioning that.

Josh