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Also, just because something is cheap, doens't mean it can't be wasted. We all revel in the new technology, but at the same time can lament that we need this much horsepower to do the same tasks that have been essentially unchanged for the past 10 years.

Yet, a 10 year old machine is not even viable today.

It's been making me want to move back to the simpler tools of software development just I can curtail the resources needed just to create software. Speaking mostly of Java now, the modern IDEs and app servers etc. are just SO BIG, and so hungry, yet are still aggravatingly slow. We used to be able to support companies on a computer with less power (and storage/RAM for that matter) than the iPhone. Now we need rooms filled with them.

Just seems like we're on a treadmill and it doesn't get appreciably better. It still takes forever to get apps out, and they're still slow.

It seems modern machines have just enabled more buearacracy than actual work.

Just lamenting, you can't go back, just hard to see the progress beyond gradients and bouncy buttons sometimes.

Well, it's viable to me. It would also be viable to my friend who would love to have a computer but can't afford one.

I only wish I could have put it that well!

Guess it depends on how valuable your time is, really. Though I for one don't believe in the concept of keeping up with the Jonses, neither would I spend several hours trying to get (for example) a sound card to work when I can drive down to Fry's and get one that works out of the box for $30.

Just for the record, my main PC is about 5 years old.. a P4 2.8ghz, so you gotta know that I don't run out and buy the latest, bleeding edge stuff. But a 1ghz PC w/128MB of RAM? I'd probably draw the line at around 1.4ghz I'm just not gonna cripple my productivity just because my PC doesn't have the horsepower to run the apps I want to.

I guess if you can't afford it, then you can't afford it. But if you can afford it and you have a PC that's slower than snot on a doorknob and/or eating up more of your time than it should, you'd probably be doing yourself a favor by picking up a new one and give the old one to someone who needs it.

Learning time is always time well spent. :-)



That's correct, of course, I wouldn't do so, too. But remember: When you're interested in "reviving" older hardware, computer stores usually don't carry the parts you need. For example, my sound card is a cheap CMI thing for less than 10 Euro, works better than the built-in VIA AC'97 soundcrap. Money well invested. The good thing about PCI is: It's present from P1 class processors up to modern systems (which usually include built-in sound stuff). So instead of trying to figure out how to activate a strange nonstandard loadmyfirmwarefirst crap sound card, I'd buy a new one. If it's too complicated to get the sound card running, it's crap anyway. Nearly all good sound cards - even the old ones - are standard compliant or relatively easy to set up.



Similar here, P4 2.0 GHz, still with SDR-SDRAM (taken from the previous system) because I'm to mean to buy DDR-SDRAM. :-) I'll better change the complete system when (a) this one stops working or (b) this one does not fit my (futire) needs anymore. But actually, I don't see any reason to invest in IT infrastructure. Never change a running system that serves you perfectly. :-)

Another thing regarding buying things: Better buy something that's good for a long time than something that is considered "best" for a moment, revealing that it's crap after a few months. (Furthermore: The worst solution prevails.)



Running specific applications is a point for a good decision, I agree. You're using your system for productive reasons as it seems. What do most home users do? Listen to music, playing videos from the web, treat their PC like a typewriter. That's what they can do with a 300 MHz PC, too - granted that the respective software is installed. For example, LaTeX doesn't need tons of RAM, but produces better looking documents than (insert your favourite hate word processor here). :-)



Yes, I agree with that. It's just up to your individual feelings how much time you are willing to invest. Or, on the other hand, give up, that's possible, too. I would not invest time to get an older system running when I've not got a valid (!) reason to do so (e. g. no money, sufficient power for the particular job).

It's not the speed, it's the memory; throw an extra 128MB in there and it opens a world of possibilities.

I've got an old Dell tower with a PIII750/256MB, I've thrown a couple of extra drives in an use it mostly as a backup server on my home network. Cost me an arm and freaking leg when I bought it something like 8 years ago, and I guess I refuse to stop using it just because of that expenditure. But it has KDE and runs most standard apps just fine. Konq, Opera, OOo2, etc. I avoid firefox because, well, I don't have 128GB of memory, but beyond that it works well enough that I would categorize it as usable. Sure, it takes longer to boot, and apps take a little longer to start up, but once running, there's little *perceivable* difference with my snappy dual-core lappy. I wouldn't want to use it as my day-to-day, but I wouldn't feel too guilty giving it to someone else for their day-to-day, depending on their needs.

I do think there's too much of an emphasis on "must-upgrade". I think things have gotten out of hand. Hell, I've got an old Compaq corp PC from our company with a PII450/256MB and XP Pro. For web browsing or even using MS Office, it's adequate and would work surprisingly well for many people (our company gave them away to the employees when we did a forklift upgrade many years back, and I know people that still use them as the "family" PC). A stick of RAM or a faster HDD will often work wonders for a PC, much more cost-effectively than replacement.