The watertown question
Jun. 3rd, 2003 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmazeMy desktop machine (named watertown; it makes sense if you know the naming scheme) is about three years old now. It feels a little pokey sometimes; its processor is a 700 MHz Athlon, it has 256 MB of RAM, it only has a 20 GB hard drive. There's this thought that I'd be happier about the machine and I'd use it more if I replaced some of the crufty components, and each of them individually would probably be well within my toy budget.
But wait. Now I'm buying a motherboard/CPU, and memory, and a hard drive. I have a spare video card. Now I'm a case and a network card away from having an entirely new computer. Maybe I should do that instead. And then I could either sell the old machine or use it as a backup Windows box to play games on.
So now I've decided to spend a moderate amount of money on replacing my desktop machine. But wait: I don't actually use that machine very much. Part of it is that it's a little slow, but another part of it is that I have a work-provided laptop, and spend huge amounts of my life in front of other computers anyways, and so having a good desktop machine is only slightly appealing. Something to play Black and White and Train Simulator on is useful, as is something with a real keyboard and two real screens, but that doesn't seem worth spending that amount of money on.
...which takes us back to the incremental thing: I can more easily justify spending a unit of money here and there to myself if it makes me happy. Aaagh. Decisions...
But wait. Now I'm buying a motherboard/CPU, and memory, and a hard drive. I have a spare video card. Now I'm a case and a network card away from having an entirely new computer. Maybe I should do that instead. And then I could either sell the old machine or use it as a backup Windows box to play games on.
So now I've decided to spend a moderate amount of money on replacing my desktop machine. But wait: I don't actually use that machine very much. Part of it is that it's a little slow, but another part of it is that I have a work-provided laptop, and spend huge amounts of my life in front of other computers anyways, and so having a good desktop machine is only slightly appealing. Something to play Black and White and Train Simulator on is useful, as is something with a real keyboard and two real screens, but that doesn't seem worth spending that amount of money on.
...which takes us back to the incremental thing: I can more easily justify spending a unit of money here and there to myself if it makes me happy. Aaagh. Decisions...
