In my house we have three computers, one smart phone and another computer in our away office. I suspect this is average or at least slightly below average for those who have kids and this gives me pause as I have of late come to hate computers in all their various forms.
I hate them mostly but not always because of the software that they run and the incessant and completely unnecessary updates that are required with such tedious regularity. It doesn't much matter what brand of hardware we are talking about. As an example we have a MacBook Pro, iMac, eMachine & a Toshiba Satellite and fortunately only one smart phone. an iPhone4. Between these pieces of hardware our life revolves mostly around keeping up with the the completely useless and annoying software updates/upgrades and 3rd party patches.
Lets take the MacBook Pro as an example. As hardware I still like it very much as it is my personal machine and I keep it well tuned and clean, but it initially cost me LVL 1,580 at Capital in Riga which was hard to justify at the time, but, solid is the description I would use as it is dented from repeated drops at airport security desks and still hasn't missed a beat except for one battery replacement. I have it partitioned to run Mountain Lion (or Snoop Lion as I call it) on one side and Win7 on the other (I WILL NOT be upgrading to Win8). I do this because it is my work machine and I drag it all around to different clients but being a late 2008 model and hard done by it will fail soon I suspect and at the end of the day I will not miss it. It is heavy and when I look at the money I have put into it, primarily it's initial purchase price because it is an Apple device, I have regret and will not be doing the Apple fanboy thing anymore. Same reason I won't be replacing my iPhone4 with the 5 or whatever it is when my current phone fails. I'm just sick of the expense, I paid CAN 850 cash unlocked so as to avoid a contract due to the fact that I don't really have a permanent residence which is kind of a ridiculous price for a phone. I've dropped that Round Cornered Rectangle® several times as well and while I managed to avoid cracking the glass something now vibrates inside when I turn the volume up. But it's a pretty over-hyped hand set anyway and I won't miss it either. I'm so tired of losing my DATA settings every time the OS updates when I sync to iTunes because it always ends up defaulting to the original factory settings. I hate smart phones, will never have another one. My wife's old Nokia 6300 is still ticking along and she likes it fine in spite of still having two working Motorola Razor's and a Nokia NSeries all with SIM cards for other countries.
I could make a rather impressive mobile with all the dead phones we have! StarTac, Nokia 3510, Nokia 6681 (my first smart phone) and a bunch of other Nokia's I can't remember the model numbers for but which are still rattling around my junk drawer slowly distorting from bloating batteries, a hardware version of a Steven King horror novel.
The Toshiba Satellite is a boat anchor around our neck. It has a defective power jack and whenever sideways stress is placed on the power cord the system shorts out and the OS is lost necessitating a clean re-install. This is cumbersome as Microsoft doesn't support the old OS's like XP SP3 (this computer came with SP2 when we purchased it at Gorbuska Market in Moscow and I have to update it to SP3 and then re-load Office from a different Microsoft account, the horror...the horror!). We don't upgrade the OS from XP because it is never online and is used only to run an office projector, printer and produce Word docs. And what a heavy piece of work it is since it's a 2005 model. This is a serious problem with these types of power jacks by the way as I had another Toshiba Satellite circa 2002 that suffered from the same problem which is not shared by Apple which uses a magnetic connector. Most satisfying thing I have ever done was to rip the HD out of my Toshiba case and throw the rest in the bin. Brilliant.
But the eMachine is great. It cost only LVL 200 last year here in Riga and while it is made of cheap plastic and lacks an optical drive it is pretty much the way these things should be. Über cheap and easily replaceable with Win7 loaded. I'm not even sure how to update the thing since it's in Russian!
Finally I have found the answer and it is ignorance. Ignorance is bliss and when this piece of cheap plastic gives me enough grief I will throw it against the wall without remorse and go buy something else, as it should be.
I hate them mostly but not always because of the software that they run and the incessant and completely unnecessary updates that are required with such tedious regularity. It doesn't much matter what brand of hardware we are talking about. As an example we have a MacBook Pro, iMac, eMachine & a Toshiba Satellite and fortunately only one smart phone. an iPhone4. Between these pieces of hardware our life revolves mostly around keeping up with the the completely useless and annoying software updates/upgrades and 3rd party patches.
Lets take the MacBook Pro as an example. As hardware I still like it very much as it is my personal machine and I keep it well tuned and clean, but it initially cost me LVL 1,580 at Capital in Riga which was hard to justify at the time, but, solid is the description I would use as it is dented from repeated drops at airport security desks and still hasn't missed a beat except for one battery replacement. I have it partitioned to run Mountain Lion (or Snoop Lion as I call it) on one side and Win7 on the other (I WILL NOT be upgrading to Win8). I do this because it is my work machine and I drag it all around to different clients but being a late 2008 model and hard done by it will fail soon I suspect and at the end of the day I will not miss it. It is heavy and when I look at the money I have put into it, primarily it's initial purchase price because it is an Apple device, I have regret and will not be doing the Apple fanboy thing anymore. Same reason I won't be replacing my iPhone4 with the 5 or whatever it is when my current phone fails. I'm just sick of the expense, I paid CAN 850 cash unlocked so as to avoid a contract due to the fact that I don't really have a permanent residence which is kind of a ridiculous price for a phone. I've dropped that Round Cornered Rectangle® several times as well and while I managed to avoid cracking the glass something now vibrates inside when I turn the volume up. But it's a pretty over-hyped hand set anyway and I won't miss it either. I'm so tired of losing my DATA settings every time the OS updates when I sync to iTunes because it always ends up defaulting to the original factory settings. I hate smart phones, will never have another one. My wife's old Nokia 6300 is still ticking along and she likes it fine in spite of still having two working Motorola Razor's and a Nokia NSeries all with SIM cards for other countries.
I could make a rather impressive mobile with all the dead phones we have! StarTac, Nokia 3510, Nokia 6681 (my first smart phone) and a bunch of other Nokia's I can't remember the model numbers for but which are still rattling around my junk drawer slowly distorting from bloating batteries, a hardware version of a Steven King horror novel.
The Toshiba Satellite is a boat anchor around our neck. It has a defective power jack and whenever sideways stress is placed on the power cord the system shorts out and the OS is lost necessitating a clean re-install. This is cumbersome as Microsoft doesn't support the old OS's like XP SP3 (this computer came with SP2 when we purchased it at Gorbuska Market in Moscow and I have to update it to SP3 and then re-load Office from a different Microsoft account, the horror...the horror!). We don't upgrade the OS from XP because it is never online and is used only to run an office projector, printer and produce Word docs. And what a heavy piece of work it is since it's a 2005 model. This is a serious problem with these types of power jacks by the way as I had another Toshiba Satellite circa 2002 that suffered from the same problem which is not shared by Apple which uses a magnetic connector. Most satisfying thing I have ever done was to rip the HD out of my Toshiba case and throw the rest in the bin. Brilliant.
But the eMachine is great. It cost only LVL 200 last year here in Riga and while it is made of cheap plastic and lacks an optical drive it is pretty much the way these things should be. Über cheap and easily replaceable with Win7 loaded. I'm not even sure how to update the thing since it's in Russian!
Finally I have found the answer and it is ignorance. Ignorance is bliss and when this piece of cheap plastic gives me enough grief I will throw it against the wall without remorse and go buy something else, as it should be.
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