Eight years. Eight years wasn’t always a long time for an appliance. Back in the day, it was common to have one phone in the house, and that was the phone you had for years. You had a washing machine until it broke down, and you’d at least try and get the thing fixed before you bought a new one. And kitchen appliances lasted forever, shucks, they still do. My stand mixer is going to be one of those things I will never get rid of. Mr. Charlton ain’t going back to making bread with his hands like some sort of pedestrian.

Computer’s though, that’s something that gets old quick. Not many people have vintage computers. Besides a couple of strange peripherals, you want the latest and greatest. Not only does the hardware get old, but the software for computers is always getting updated. A computer five years ago running Windows 7 won’t be running the same version of Windows 7  today. The software giant, Microsoft, is constantly tweaking and adding things. New features are usually great, but it bogs down the hardware. Unless you go rogue with an operating system like Linux, it’s something you’ll have to deal with.

For the non-techies reading my blog, think of it like this. If I bought a car tomorrow, stuck it in a garage for a decade, pulled it out, how would the car run? It’d run fine. You might have to lube up some bit here and there, but if the room was sealed, you wouldn’t really have any issues, except it might not have that new car smell anymore. A computer’s a little different. You buy a computer, hide it away, and pull it out ten years later? It’s going to be a pile of crap. We’ll take the car analogy again. You store the car away for a while, pull it out for a test drive after a decade, and you find out the roads are now made of steel coated with a strange lubricant. You can still drive, but you’re going to have to slow your ass down. But hey, you decide to go upgrade your car at the mechanics. Maybe they can help you out. No go. Turns out the new wheels use a way different method of attachment. Your car is no longer any good.

This isn’t a particularly great analogy. The gist is computers get old, and they need to be upgraded if you want to use the latest software. I’ve got a little laptop, an old netbook I call ‘The Pony’, and it’s fine for writing words. But it can’t even handle the internet anymore. That’s what I use the Pony for, though. When I want to write stuff down and I’d rather not be distracted.

Enter ‘The Work Horse’. This was a great machine. I mean, it had a Xeon Intel processor. A Xeon! It had 4 gigs of RAM. Big old 300 GB hard drives, and it was one of those new fangled ‘Raptor’ drives that spun at 10,000 RPMs instead of 7,200. You can’t just stick that Xeon in any old motherboard, though, that baby required the special server motherboard. That board was big, too, and it needed a special computer case that could handle the size. I wasn’t pissing around either, this was going to be a multi-media center, so I needed the separate audio card. To top it off, I had a 260x GeForce Video card. A couple of fans to her the Horse cool. It was a work of art. Eight years ago.

It’s basically being held together with duct tape at this point. I’ve done everything I could to keep her going, but it’s been a long eight years. I can’t part with the old gal, though. She ain’t as fast as she used to be, but she can still carry a load, so I’ll turn her into a little home server, add a couple of old hard drives to her and use her as a little storage unit.

I ain’t a car guy, never really saw the appeal, but I get why other people are. I look at computers the same way. My new machine should be getting here tomorrow, and I’m going to love every second assembling her, but I’ll miss things about the one I’m writing on right now. How it basically heats my little office here, or how it won’t boot up if I have a USB memory stick inserted into it.

Tomorrow, the Work Horse is going to be put to greener pastures. After eight years, it could use a bit of a break.

Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton

p.s. After the OS, what should I install first?

p.s.s. I now feel like I used to on Christmas Eve. I might not even go to bed tonight.