Friday, December 09, 2005
What not to buy...
This is in response to Lance Ulanoff's rather distasteful evaluation of current and upcoming technology. In his article, he states very clearly what not to buy, what to maybe buy, and what to definitely buy when it comes to computer techology.
First off, I absolutely hate it when people tell me that CRT monitors are no good "because they're big and bulky." Um, excuse me, am I going to be moving my monitor that much? Probably not. It's going to sit in a happy little place on my desk and basically be a dust magnet. Besides, what am I buying a monitor for? To display stuff, of course! CRT monitors generally have better color depth and a more true representation of color information than their LCD counterparts do. Yes, LCD monitors are nice, but they're not the godsent of uber-monitors. Really, to tell me flat out that my beloved CRT monitors (of which I have a few) are worthless kind of jumps the gun. Before making such statements, find out what the application for the monitor is.
Lance also made a comment about not buying 802.11b hardware. This is partly true. While I probably wouldn't go out and try to buy new 802.11b stuff, any old stuff will still work just fine. In fact, all of the transmitters in my house except the router itself are 802.11b. We're cheap and haven't bothered purchasing the new G stuff. I would also tend to steer clear of the non-ratified hardware (i.e. Pre-N) because things can change before it becomes standardized and you could be left with basically useless hardware. Don't even get me started on Gigabit Ethernet!
While I think it's important to advance with the technology, but if I embraced all technology as fast as it came out, I'd be buying a new machine every week and upgrading every 2 or 3 minutes. It's rediculous. I'm actually writing this blog on an old PIII machine running at ~1GHz with 512MB of RAM and a puny 30GB hard disk. Also, my web server (http://schillclan.homelinux.net) is a classic Pentium 233MHz with 128MB of RAM and a ~10GB hard disk. It's running Red Hat Linux 9 and hardly has a problem at all. Sure, it's not the fastest thing in the world, but it works and it was free. Hey, free is good. One of the guys in the discussion boards for the above-mentioned article well stated that he can stick with his cheap computer and it'll obsolete itself just as fast as the expensive megasystem.
Also, I'm not quite sure I agree that home-made machines are less reliable than brand name boxes. It all depends on how well the home-maker does his/her research into parts compatibility. Note that bigger numbers/higher price do not always mean better quality and performance. Anyone who says that you absolutely need this new 10,000RPM hard disk because it's faster doesn't know what they're talking about. The "way fast" hard disk will probably cost 2 or 3 times what the standard disk costs and won't get you any noticeable performance increase unless you're doing certain types of work on the machine.
Anyhow, yeah, I just thought I'd add my two cents' worth to the discussion of upgrades. Basically, the bottom line is to evaluate your current status and usage of the machine before jumping on the next big thing.
First off, I absolutely hate it when people tell me that CRT monitors are no good "because they're big and bulky." Um, excuse me, am I going to be moving my monitor that much? Probably not. It's going to sit in a happy little place on my desk and basically be a dust magnet. Besides, what am I buying a monitor for? To display stuff, of course! CRT monitors generally have better color depth and a more true representation of color information than their LCD counterparts do. Yes, LCD monitors are nice, but they're not the godsent of uber-monitors. Really, to tell me flat out that my beloved CRT monitors (of which I have a few) are worthless kind of jumps the gun. Before making such statements, find out what the application for the monitor is.
Lance also made a comment about not buying 802.11b hardware. This is partly true. While I probably wouldn't go out and try to buy new 802.11b stuff, any old stuff will still work just fine. In fact, all of the transmitters in my house except the router itself are 802.11b. We're cheap and haven't bothered purchasing the new G stuff. I would also tend to steer clear of the non-ratified hardware (i.e. Pre-N) because things can change before it becomes standardized and you could be left with basically useless hardware. Don't even get me started on Gigabit Ethernet!
While I think it's important to advance with the technology, but if I embraced all technology as fast as it came out, I'd be buying a new machine every week and upgrading every 2 or 3 minutes. It's rediculous. I'm actually writing this blog on an old PIII machine running at ~1GHz with 512MB of RAM and a puny 30GB hard disk. Also, my web server (http://schillclan.homelinux.net) is a classic Pentium 233MHz with 128MB of RAM and a ~10GB hard disk. It's running Red Hat Linux 9 and hardly has a problem at all. Sure, it's not the fastest thing in the world, but it works and it was free. Hey, free is good. One of the guys in the discussion boards for the above-mentioned article well stated that he can stick with his cheap computer and it'll obsolete itself just as fast as the expensive megasystem.
Also, I'm not quite sure I agree that home-made machines are less reliable than brand name boxes. It all depends on how well the home-maker does his/her research into parts compatibility. Note that bigger numbers/higher price do not always mean better quality and performance. Anyone who says that you absolutely need this new 10,000RPM hard disk because it's faster doesn't know what they're talking about. The "way fast" hard disk will probably cost 2 or 3 times what the standard disk costs and won't get you any noticeable performance increase unless you're doing certain types of work on the machine.
Anyhow, yeah, I just thought I'd add my two cents' worth to the discussion of upgrades. Basically, the bottom line is to evaluate your current status and usage of the machine before jumping on the next big thing.
