My first bleeding edge computer

Wow, $140 for Home Edition sounds expensive. As I said, for ~$200 you can have a perfectly working capable PC with OS, so I wonder if anyone is buying a standalone OS license nowadays. I have not paid for Windows OS for a long time but I think I paid less in a boxed retail version of NT or Pro version of OS can't remember if that was XP or 7. Those days OTA update and online download were not available yet.

 

I’ve always wondered if anyone ever did outside enthusiasts. $100+ for full Windows has always been a thing, $99 for an upgrade version.

I remember when office max (remember those things) had rows of fresh boxed operating systems and software, never see those days again

Would be interesting to know how many retail copies have sold

 

Hey, I was one of those who lined up all night outside of the retail store to pick up the copy of the retail box of Windows 3 on the day it was released. Never again. LOL

 

That was actually a vast exciting improvement in an exciting time of personal computing. Things back then were special and could improve your productivity.

That was before the electronics industry entered the boring appliance like malaise era and everything was special and actually improving in meaningful visible ways.

That was Long before the AMD/Intel race to the bottom of daily obsolescence that killed the industry and with it enthusiasm for PCs.

 

Slide rule is emergency equipment with no power any where. How many people can actually do statistics the hard way?

I remember back in the Civil War that we ran out of current load and balance/combo slip sticks. So I copied the front of a new one and glued the picture to the old slip sticks. No body died so I guess it worked.

 

Made my first visit to "Incredible Universe", a brand new big box store, on the first day Windows 95 was released. I told my wife that the very loud music and strobe lights everywhere gave me a headache and that I probably wouldn't be returning. That Tandy owned store went from a big flashy opening with all kinds of promotions to a "going out of business sale" in about 6 months.

I loved CompUSA which is also gone now. We have a local MicroCenter that is the only computer-centric big box store remaining. I buy my Arduino (single board computer) accessories there.

 

I buy all of mine on eBay if i don't mind waiting a few weeks for the E-packet from China....or Amazon if I want it in a few days.

Go into a physical store for a computer?

Um....yeah.
I suppose I might if the price were right.....but.....

 

The closest I came was buying my last laptop online on sale from Costco.

 

My last "new" computer purchased was at the midnight opening of Office Dept on Black Friday sale 5 or 6 years ago. I picked up a $99 laptop by Asus. It was a 10" netbook with 32GB eMMC storage, 2GB RAM running Windows 8 on Intel Atom CPU. No expandability except MicroSD card slot. I managed to update the OS to Win10 several years after the purchase, and it still runs a browser and a few additional apps although excruciatingly slowly. Way before that, I bought several brand new Sony VAIO or Fujitsu Lifebook B series subnotebooks costing over $1K/unit, but those were mainly for my work. Almost all other computers are purchased used on eBay. I have set the max price I would spend on a computer to be $500 since the debut of cheap laptops on the market ~15 years ago. Many of them were less than $200. Almost as important as the price, for a laptop to be functional for my use, the weight has to be less than 3 lbs.

 

If you rarely use MBP on a battery, that means it is more or less being used as a desktop with connected peripherals. Why didn't you consider Mac Mini with M1 for purely desktop use? I have not priced it, but think it would be much more affordable than Macbook Pro.

 

Yeah, but for that rare occasions, you have your current 2020 M1 MBP. Or did you trade it in? If you did, then I get your logic.

I never like to rely on a single machine for something I use so often and must-have for my daily activity. That's why I have multiple computers (now mostly laptops but still have a few desktops) set up with exactly the same apps and setups. I would much rather have multiple cheap and old but perfectly usable computers than having a single "bleeding edge" super expensive computer. I have several cloned Chromebooks and several cloned Windows laptops. Also has one very old Mac mini that I used for a single task. In fact, I recently picked up a used HP laptop of exactly the same model as the one issued by the work. I can't use the personal laptop for my work, but having exactly the same model allows me to swap the laptop from the docking station and use the same peripherals, three monitors, ergonomic keyboard, trackball, external drives, ethernet connection, NAS, etc. Still, my budget has always been ~$200 for a system.

 

Back in 1967 I went to work for a computer manufacturer. Debug at the transistor level in the middle of the night. Carry the listings in the trunk of the car. Things were simple then.

Then Apple and Atari and Commodore came out and I chose an Atari for home. Built up over time.

When IBM came out with their PC, shortly after so did Commodore and Columbia. Still the cost of a small car.

A year or so later, the clone motherboards started to appear and I built my first clone. Many clones later I taught computer hardware selection to a Users Group and helped them assemble their computers. Lots cheaper for me to let them pay for the hardware and I got to play with it.

Led the group that determined if my company should standardize on Apple or IBM at the time when NT came on thirty some floppies and took almost a day to load onto a 286..

After 37 years in the computer business, I retired.

Now I buy whatever Costco has on sale. Computers have, for me, become like terminals and as long as the OS is on SSD, it is good enough. Not sure I plan to migrate to the next Windows version for at least a year as it would require a new hardware purchase.

Never had an interest in paying the Apple-Tax though they are marvelous machines.

 

I have several that I use on the job running XP in "airplane" mode.

That's been my experience.

My CFO remains utterly delighted with her (base, rose gold) M1 and I just got her an early Christmas present with a "leftover" watch.
Their stuff is pricey and they use the 1970's GMC model of planned obsolescence, but I haven't had a SINGLE "howdoI" question in almost 3 years - and my sweet daughter has assumed the role as her Tier-1 tech support.

 

Great!
She will love it.

Whatcha gonna do with the oldies, or did you trade them in on the newies?

I was going to upgrade some of my IOS stuff this year but my 11, Mini5, and the SE watch are still knocking it out of the park...so I'm gonna kick those upgrades off to the right for a year.
Maybe two.
I have 2 other hobbies (reloading/optics and a BARE budget camera drone) that are going to get Christmas money this year instead.

I'm thinking that, given the current attention to inflation you might be happier later that you bought the MBPs sooner.

Best!