Comments on: How To Upgrade Your Computer

By: JCB

JCB — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 02:52:21 +0000

Amen!!! Listen to the man. It is true. With the price of computers so low, it really does not make sense to upgrade.

By: JCB

JCB — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 02:51:25 +0000

Amen!!! Listen to the man. It is true. With the price of computers so low, it really does not make sense.

By: Benoit

Benoit — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 23:30:24 +0000

I disagree with steps 1-3. They should read:

Send the computer to a recycler where they’ll be able to reclaim the heavy metals laced throughout the machine.

(Except, of course, that it’ll be done by starving kids in India who wear no protective gear… maybe it *is* better to have it go to the municipal dump.)

By: Andy P

Andy P — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 13:33:08 +0000

I have upgraded my PC several times since buying it four years ago – it’s had a new mobo, CPU, graphics card, couple of new hard drives, and of course external peripherals which don’t really count. I’ve been happy to do so, as it’s kept it fairly close to the cutting edge constantly, for about the same price as two separate cutting-edge PCs four years apart.

That’s pretty much going to stop though, as I have had ‘issues’ with various different things and there’s no-one to take it back to… a game doesn’t work, so I upgrade drivers, that doesn’t work so I contact the graphics card manufacturer, they say it’s not them and it must be the sound card… and so on, ad nauseum. I also don’t have time to spend on upgrading any more, it’s a time-consuming process, particularly if it requires a reinstall of Windows or something…

So yeah… basically, I agree with the original post, from here on in.

By: Eric Tilton

Eric Tilton — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 23:09:03 +0000

But… but… Fuck. Fuck. Yeah. Fuck. But…? Fuck. OK.

By: psu

psu — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 21:54:42 +0000

Better yet, buy *2* external disks.

By: Nat

Nat — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 16:10:36 +0000

Home backup? Buy a USB/Firewire disk and back up onto that. It’s not perfect, but it’s less absurd than tape or burning dozens of CDs or DVDs.

By: chris morrow

chris morrow — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 15:22:42 +0000

uhm… I run lots of internet facing servers, none has been hacked yet. most don’t even have ‘firewall’ things protecting them even. I have even upgraded parts of them over time…

I like the overall tone of the original post… most folks just don’t know enough, or care enough, or even really NEED to ‘upgrade’ anymore. Everything inside a computer is a commodity at this point, so just replace it entirely and move on.

I’d like to see someone address the home-backup problem though. What’s going to happen when your brand-new computer with 2 400GB disks in it has a disk failure? What will happen to your legions of home video’s and digital pictures and mp3′s (legally obtained of course). No one seems to have a reasonable solution for the home user WRT backup and recovery

-Chris
(btw, why pay someone to do the hosting for you if you can do it for free?)

By: mlehrian

mlehrian — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 04:10:36 +0000

Actually, retiring machines into servers rather than upgrading them is a great thing to do. Servers are different. They have different requirements.

If you want to run a server, great. There are lots of good reasons to do it. Home media server. Backup. Render farm. Distributed compile farm. (Just don’t run your own Internet server. Save yourself a lot of grief and go with a hosting service. You will get hacked and be unhappy.)

However, at the end of the day, upgrading servers is still just as silly as upgrading any other computer.

By: Chris Morrow

Chris Morrow — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 17:01:47 +0000

Uhm… so my sun ultra-2 with 4 scsi drives is not worth keeping around you say? what about all of the other server equipment currently doing little jobs for me?

Why not just buy a laptop and be done with it? Most laptops today are desktop equivalents anyway… though I say this not ever having played a PC game in my life.