Not How It Ought To Be

[poliphilo]

The computer was going slow this morning. Ailz took a look at it- removed some impacted crud and got it to move a little faster. "Really, it's time to buy a new one," she said.

A new one? But I've only had this one for just over two years.

Yes, I know, I know. That's how things are these days. But I'm not happy with it. The old-time craftsman in me is affronted. Your tools are an extension of the body. You care for them, they last a lifetime. And then you pass them on to your heirs.

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

If you are a tinkerer, then you can deal with this. Replace some RAM chips with more RAM, add a larger hard drive, replace the cache memory with faster cache memory, various things that people do to computers to make the same computer better without replacing.

Yes, you do eventually get into a "Grandfather's axe" situation -- ("This was my grandfather's axe. They sure made axes better in those days. We've replaced the head three times, and the handle five times, but it's the same axe, right?") -- and, eventually, you may even run into a situation where computers change so much that you actually do have to start over, but we've gotten nearly ten years of use out of a computer that way -- it's just that, by the end, few of the parts of that computer were there in the beginning.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm not a tinkerer. I don't dare. I can fix things that can be fixed with glue but I steer clear of electronics..