Upgrading vs. buying new: Bring a new lease of life to your PC experience

I remember buying my first portable pc by TwinHead. It was a 386 pc with about 16MB of RAM, and 80 MB hard disk. Yes, MB, not GB.

Nowadays, I’m using two PCs (both of which are or were secondhand at one time) at home: one with 2 hard disks topping out at 160GB, 768MB of RAM; and the other about half the size. I also have numerous portable disks (three, I think!), a DVD burner, and lots of memory cards,… I’m sure I don’t have enough computer memory now, and I know I haven’t solved my computer back up problems even now!

the \'second\' at home PC...

But for many people replacing their desktops isn’t much of an option these days: Vista sucks, existing XP installations are fine with current generation hardware, and perhaps financially ‘constraints’ limit replacement of your desktop for a while!

I was very lucky to replace my old 17″ CRT monitor (it’s still fine, if anyone in Taiwan wants one!) with a great quality monitor. In fact, I was so impressed at the quality vs. the price I actually bought two when I discovered our local PC store was running a special offer on ViewSonic monitors.

Monitor 19\" LCD

After getting it home, I realized something that I had been missing for a long time: excitement. I was thrilled to have extra desktop space on BOTH computers, it simply made using even the older one that much more fun. It doesn’t matter that the underlying PCs are over 5 years old, the simple upgrading of the monitors made them fun again!

I’m in the market for a replacement PC at some point for sure. But if I can keep these going for another year or two, where’s the harm? I only use them for surfing, music, email, blogging and other less intensive tasks.

If your budget is ‘constrained’, there are simpler and less expensive ways to upgrade older equipment like this. Buying certain add-ons can really impact how you FEEL about your PC. For me, that included buying a new monitor (at NT$6500 – about US$220 approx.). Other upgrades could include a new graphics card, a new set of speakers, even just a better quality keyboard or mouse. To bring back excitement without breaking your budget, buy something that you could use to extend your PC usage: a Skype phone, a new game, … Whatever.

You’ll certainly find that you can enjoy your existing PC much longer this way, save a little in the short term, and still upgrade to that brand new PC (with Vista, if you must!) … Oh, and there’s another huge advantage: not upgrading avoids a lot of upgrading hassles.

Ad: if you’re looking for new larger monitors, try these…

And don’t forget to check out my own download … [download#1]

Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis

Stimulus Checks: Are you going to go shopping?

Having ranted on the recent post about spending money, I was reminded of the Tax Back scheme that the US government is endorsing now. In this video, some Americans are talking about their plans: and they are not SPLURGING… They are using the money to pay for education, mortgages, and basic stuff. Few are planning to spend it… but that’s what they say they will do…

If you’d like some ideas on how to make that stimulus check work FOR you, not against you, then get the RSS Feed Download and do some reading! [download#1]

Flickr: My first photostream!

I’ve been creating my first albums on Flickr. I’m beginning to see why I prefer it to Picasa. Though the Picasa Albums software is wonderful in its own way, esp. as it really draws so many disparate sources together into one interface. And therein lies my problem: I would like to put all my photographs in ONE place to make access, backing up, uploading and more easier. It seems that Picasa can’t do that easily.

I’m looking at using Flickr as a possible substitute as there is no actual limit in Pro accounts for uploading, it’s easy to manage photos and I’m finding it easy (too easy) to remove duplicates.

flickr album

Do take a look at my photostream. Which hosting do you prefer – Picasa, Flickr, self-hosting or another?