Personal Computer Hand Me Downs
After spending a weekend shuffling computers around my house, and cleaning up disk drives and networks, it dawned on me that computers in the home have become a commodity that are replaced much more often (certainly more often than 10 years ago).
This commodity typically runs out of vogue (i.e. not enough memory, computing power, graphics power, etc.,) in less than 3 years (interesting that if you buy one for your business you have to write it down over 5 years, but that is for another discussion).
Our family was in dire need of a new computer for my younger children (it really was painful to use, it was 5 years old and really couldn’t keep up with much of anything). We had been looking at replacing the existing computer, however, another methodology came to mind and hence the idea of the hand me down computer came to mind.
My oldest goes back to school soon and she had a new computer last year to go to school with (bought by her grandparents), which was a desktop model. My daughter had mentioned that she had some issues working in the library and such, for research and thought that she might try to get a laptop some time in the next year or so. I went and investigated laptop prices and then found an ok deal in the “crash and dent” section of the Best Buy (well the box was open, that seems to be the only issue with it).
This computer then meant that her desktop computer could be moved over to her sisters, and their computer will now be donated to an organization that could use it.
This made me think that computers really are hand me downs these days, from older children to younger children and finally donated at the end of their use to the family.
The only problem with the hand me downs, is having to renew Anti-Virus and Word processing software along the way.
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August 24th, 2009 at 3:55 AM
Of course, any desktop can be upgraded, hardware-wise, as well. Cheaper than buying a new one, and that’s the beauty of desktops versus laptops – every component can easily be upgraded in a desktop. That’s exactly why I’m currently saving up to build a new computer to replace my 4 year old laptop – because it’s cheaper to build than to buy, and 3 years from now when said built desktop is sluggish by that day’s standards, I can just upgrade it rather than replacing it.
August 24th, 2009 at 3:57 AM
P.S. Renew word processing software? I’m assuming you mean upgrade to the latest version, which isn’t really necessary. And even then, OpenOffice.org is a fantastic free alternative.
August 24th, 2009 at 4:46 AM
I’m not so sure you need to replace them in 3 years. I’m running on a P4 2.4Ghz, they were released in 2002 and still works just fine. As for software… try Ubuntu, you’ll like it. It’s free, has all the software a person could need, and runs really well on almost anything. I only run WinXP Pro, since I play games, but you can set up a dual boot to windows if you still really want to, or run it inside a virtual machine.