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When Is A Computer Obsolete?
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When is a computer obsolete? I’ve had quite a few people tell me they need a new computer because theirs was too slow. After asking them what they mainly did with the computer and finding out it was surf the web, email etc I immediately questioned the state of their current computer. In most cases it hadn’t had routine maintenance done, was loaded with spy ware, hard drive was near capacity, or minimal ram was available. A good clean up of the software, perhaps some additional ram or a larger hard drive and it came back to life as a serviceable computer.
Moral of the story – a computer is only obsolete when it no longer is able to do what you want it to do.
[tags] windows, spy ware,computer upgrade,chris pirillo,lockergnome [/tags]
6 Comments
Scott King
October 16th, 2007
at 7:21pm
It’s obsolete when Microsoft tells us it is!………..Just kidding.I still use my Dell Pentium 133 laptop to write with when I want to be mobile. It all depends on what you want to do.
John
October 17th, 2007
at 5:40am
I agree with you. I find the same problems that you mention often when getting service calls. Just last week I went to a house that hadn’t had their computer serviced in 4 years and they wondered why they were having problems. After running CCleaner, getting rid of spyware and removing Norton and installing AVG along with a few other things I had them up and running again. I have two computers that are 4 years old and run better than most of the newer ones I work on.
Steve Willson
October 17th, 2007
at 6:17am
My self-built Pentium 3 system turns 8 in January. While I’m currently saving for a new system, that will be a laptop - not because I need more power (pretty much all I do is e-mail, surf the ‘net, and a bit of word processing), but because I want the mobility a laptop provides. (OK, I confess: I want to play Civilization 4 too.)
Chainsaw
November 29th, 2007
at 5:57pm
If you’re a PRODUCER, your computer is obsolete when it will no longer do the work you bought it to do at a profitable cost/benefit ratio. This is why many businesses hang on to OLD computers - the job is still the same and the computer still works.
If you’re a CONSUMER, your computer is obsolete when it will no longer do what you want it to. Even if you just bought it last week - if this week you decide you want something your computer can’t do, then it’s obsolete.
ragtop
November 30th, 2007
at 11:25pm
I tend to agree. Until recently, I was running WinXP on a 400 Celeron with 384M RAM. It was a little slow, but worked fine for email, web surfing, etc. The fastest computers I regularly use at home are both use PCs that I purchased as surplus from a government auction (Dell 933Mhz - my server & a Dell 2.66Ghz - my workstation).
I still have the Celeron - now running Win98 with an All-In-Wonder card. Its mostly used as the television in my home office/cave.
Steve D. Brown
September 8th, 2008
at 3:31pm
A computer is actually obsolete BEFORE you buy it.