I mainly use two computers.
Machine 1: Desktop
The chassis is from 8 years ago — built myself in university with an Athlon XP.
A senior colleague at work one day said “I’ll give you a CPU, memory, and motherboard,” so I swapped out just the internals.
CPU: Pentium 4. Memory: 2 GB. OS: Vista.
Machine 2: Laptop
An IBM ThinkPad X24 I bought at auction about 7 years ago, around when I was deciding whether to go to graduate school.
I swapped in a faster HDD at some point, but this one is retiring now.
CPU: Pentium III. Memory: 710 MB. OS: XP.
I work in an IT company, but thinking calmly about it, I’ve barely invested in IT for myself.
The desktop was a hand-me-down, and the laptop is basically a fossil.
Though I have occasionally bought machines on behalf of friends and family when they needed a replacement.
This time, I finally made the leap and ordered a new laptop.
Here’s why — I hit my limit:
· Photo editing from my DSLR is painfully slow. (Opening 2 photos triggers swap.)
· YouTube and video sites stutter and are basically unwatchable.
· The “G” key on the keyboard has gone mushy and is hard to type.
· Still on USB 1.0 (max 11 MB/s). Reading SD cards is agonizingly slow.
We’re in the USB 3.0 era now, with gigabit speeds…
· Battery is completely dead. Pull out the AC adapter and it lasts 5 minutes.
Since laptop upgrade cycles have gotten longer, I wanted something solid this time.
The ThinkPad X-series I’ve been using was well-built and lasted a long time, so I went with a successor to that.
Above is a mock-up. Below are the before/after specs:
CPU: Intel Pentium III 1.0 GHz → Intel Core i5-520M
In between there was Pentium 4, Pentium M, Core, and Core 2 — so this is skipping about 5 generations in one jump.
Memory: PC100 768 MB → PC3-8500 DDR3 4 GB
Capacity increases ~5.2x. In between were DDR and DDR2, so 3 generations.
HDD: IDE 40 GB 5400 rpm → SATA 250 GB 7200 rpm (full encryption support)
About 6x the size. Speed depends on cache and platter size so hard to judge from specs alone.
OS: Windows XP → Windows 7
Only Vista in between, so 2 generations. XP ran a long time, so that makes sense.
Delivery estimate: 1–2 weeks from order.
Writing this on the old machine right now — can’t wait to see how different the new one will feel.
It’s going to be a whole different world, I imagine.
Really looking forward to it arriving.