please empty your brain below
Also, I didn't realise people actually bought Acorns for home use. Our school had plenty of RiscPCs, and I occasionally saw them in TV playout automation systems, but never heard of much of a consumer push.
Like my previous one, the new one is very much mid-range, but I was amazed to find the spec is only twice as good (speed, memory, hard disk size).
I used to get a new computer every five years or so before that, just to keep pace with technology, with frequent upgrades to keep them useful.
I think the big difference to me is that I now have a smartphone, which by their nature need to be replaced every three years of so. I originally saw them as being a secondary device to the PC, but over time the convenience means it is now my primary. Use the PC for printing out things, writing letters, and being my main photo archive.
Maybe having a fast, light new laptop. Will bring it back into being used a lot more.
As far as technology is concerned, I'm a fan of 'its the second mouse that gets the cheese', let others buy the cutting edge stuff and find the bugs, I'll buy it when it's reliable.
I bought my current laptop for broadband access, I am considering buying another sooner rather than later simply because of its age, I may go Chromebook, or buy that and a Windows one as well, I avoid Apple as I think that they are price gouging scumbags.
Desktop for me every day, this one pays the bills and I bought it in 2012.
My most recent upgrade has been to replace the Hard disk in one laptop and one desktop with solid state drives.
Laptops are far harder - I managed to replace a speaker on my partner's elderly HP laptop some years ago after it popped. It was a nightmare, then a few weeks later the new one popped so it's been running for years with a broken left speaker.
My shortest lived PC incidentally was a Lenovo Ideapad. The hinge that opened it up broke a whopping 23 months after me buying it. Thankfully I'd bought it from John Lewis with a 2 year warranty. They did decide it was "beyond economical repair" which was amazing for something so new.
Worked first-time, hurrah (and phew)!
Some of the names I have used: Delia (a Dell machine), Minnie (one in a very small case), Neccy (one with an NEC monitor) and Atom (named after its processor chip).
It's quite a rare computer now so worth hanging on to I think but how likely it is to work again would likely depend on if the battery has caused damage.
I have had excellent results with reconditioned business - not consumer - machines, which can be got from eBay for not much and are usually in good condition (maybe a few marks on the case or the screen, but nothing disastrous) and built like tanks.
I currently use a Thinkpad Carbon X1 which cost £300 - about a sixth of what it originally cost three and a half years ago - and it is a great machine. It was top of the range by some distance at the time, and it shows.
Planned - set a limit for how long you keep a device and replace it periodically before it's performance degrades and you can (if you wish) still recover a small amount of money by selling the old unit.
Semi-reactive - When the old computer is disappointing or annoying you more than once per day, begin checking out what's available or due for release soon. Then take your time to get the deal you want before you lose patience with the existing device.
Reactive - either respond to a nice offer randomly emerging on a nice bit of kit, or wait until your current device fails, buy in a rush and hope your backups are good.
In the old days, this seemed to be driven by new features; with one exception, I bought new machines when the old ones could not do what I wanted them to do. You quoted similar reasons.
Nowadays, while still true, it's to a lesser extent. Also, I increasingly find the removal of features, notably connectors, a strong reason to stick with what you've got: As an ex audio pro, I prefer my optical out. I still use an old pentium for its SCSI connection.
Any new machine without certain features means I'd have to upgrade other hardware too, so the "right time" to buy a new computer is being pushed back more and more, and many of the newly introduced features don't look like must-haves anymore.
Now it runs better than ever on Ubuntu so didn’t need to buy new computer, although it’s reassuring to have two computers.
New computer started on Windows 10, but after a Microsoft forced update crashed it, that too runs Ubuntu.
It’s much easier changing software when you have a backup computer.
dg writes: Last time I asked, in 2016, the split was 88% male 12% female.
I got an Apple Mac LCIII in '93 (still have it in a wardrobe), since when I've not used anything but macs work or home. Followed by a 4400, a G4, an eMac, a 24" iMac, a 27" iMac and in 2018 another 27" iMac. So thats 1 roughly every 4 years. Current set up is the 2 27"s with a reconditioned iPad, the 24" is in the back room set up for audio.
As to when you should upgrade/change, you're not doing anything heavy; graphics, video, audio or games, so if the current machine is working for you and not pulling, then grand don't change.
But now is probably a good time, due to new machines coming in and shops having a stock of 'old' machines. Whichever, get 2 backup external hard drives and if u do decide to get a new one, keep the old as backup.
I'm a great believer of if it's not broke, don't fix it. But the camera on my current laptop really showed its deficiencies in the recent Zoom meetings so I'm scratching my head.
Always keep your data on an external hard drive. And back up regulalry onto another one. Do not keep them in the same place.
The biggest problem you will probably have is with software - most of it seems to be on a monthly fee basis now, rather than buy it for all time. And you may find that software you paid for in the past will no longer load, or require validations that you cannot do.
MSOffice I am looking at you here... anyone got any advice on alternatives? Open Office used to be rated? Not done any research yet (no time!), but have had a new tower system sitting on the floor for 2 months now.
It's de-facto replacement is LibreOffice which arose from the ashes of OpenOffice. LibreOffice is very much under active development, and is a very competent office suite. It's open source, free to use, and definitely a very strong contender against Microsoft Office. Basically, you can't really go wrong with LibreOffice.
Everything since then has been desktop, assembled by me. Which means it's hard to say how "old" the PC is, or even when I got a "new" PC. My current desktop has certain parts from 2006, although the main bits are only about 4 years old.
As to when to upgrade... If you're on a 6th (Core i(x) 6xxx) generation or better Intel CPU, there's very little in an upgrade. If it's older than that, there's probably a fair bit of uplift - not just in performance, but battery life, thinness, weight, screen, ports, etc. If you've not got an SSD as your main disk, then a move to that is like night and day. This can be an upgrade to the existing laptop, or part of a new purchase.
A few of machines I had used did make it to 8-10 years, but the worst only fared 1 before I had to replace the motherboard myself.
Kevin. I guess laptops are so popular because they can be put away much easier; used on the sofa; etc. I worked from home with my laptop on the dining room table for several years - at the end of the day, I put it in a cupboard - much cheaper than buying a house with a dedicated office.
BlueWitch, I'm not a big fan of subscription software, but when the Office family ediion allows for 6 users for £8 per month for all the office apps and a terabyte of cloud storage, I think it's pretty good value; certainly when compared to Adobe, for example.
As a rough indication, if your notebook has been advertised as a 'mobile workstation' and has an Energy Star badge, the manufacturer expects a MTBF of at least 13.000 hours (link). That equals to 6 hours per day for 6 years.
(My own laptop is 10 years old and forced into retirement later this year, when the newest available operating system drops out of support.)
Ian - thanks, but I would never, ever, ever, keep any of my data in 'the cloud', and I think that £96 a year for one person to lightly use Office apps (for personal use) is outrageous, when I have already bought the program on at least 4 previous occasions. I don't need a swanky new version, but none of the CDs of it that I have will now load as they all require email verification and they were linked to email addresses that no longer exist.
If you don't count the Commodore 16 my parents ill-advisedly bought me one Christmas in the 80s, my first PC was a pretty well (possibly over) specified Dell in 1999. I got 7 years out of that before deciding to upgrade when I wanted broadband.
I then got six years out of a slightly less well specified Dell before the hard disk expired. The replacement for that lasted seven years before the graphics card packed up last year. I could have just replaced the card but other bits would almost certainly have followed and I wanted to upgrade my 2006 monitor.
All of which is a long way of saying six to seven years for me. I would suggest starting to think about what you might want next after about four or five to make sure you get the right one when you eventually have to buy something new in a mad panic.
Best time is when there is something the present one cannot do, but certainly about 3 weeks before the present one dies and leaves you stranded. The science is knowing when the present one is going to die! If you could market that information for subscribers I suspect you might have a thriving business.
The damage from leaking batteries can be so bad that it's worth removing them with just a wire cutter if desoldering isn't an option.
As for your RISC PC, you'll want to take a look inside it. The internal battery might have leaked all over the motherboard. It's a nasty problem these tend to have. If it's not too bad it might be salvageable but in any case cut out the battery for now until you have chance to solder in a replacement (or sell it to someone else who will do so).
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