Reluctant Expert

Everyone and their grandmother seems to be asking me questions about computers (well, at least my grandmother, anyway). It must be upgrade season.

Upgrade season happens every eighteen months. This is, I've read, the average time it takes for someone to become dissatisfied with there computer. At least this is true with the PC world, Macs are different.

There are several reasons for this. One is software related, the other is hardware.

Software bloat is one of the causes of dissatisfaction. Users aren't dissatisfied with the software, however. They're bothered by the way it runs on their PC. Software, through patches, feature creep, and the philosophy of jam-more-crap-then-the-other-guy, tends to require more CPU and memory over time. The programs are simply bigger. Take windows, for example. I've used the same set of software on my PC's for years (Java, a Java IDE, a browser, Civ III). Yet every OS upgrade has expected more and more from the PC. True, the applications have also required more (Java is notorious for being a memory hog), but it seems like some time could have been spent on performance enhancements for windows.

Games cause another level of software-related dissatisfaction. Games are the industry's cutting edge, in terms of pushing the envelop. The effect of this envelope pushing is that they bring along with them the need for the newest graphics hardware and CPUs. It's seems that every year, a game developer puts something out that finally requires the advanced GPU technologies that were developed last year. I've never recommended that anyone be on the cutting edge of graphics technology. Games are always six months to a year behind. But still, that's an upgrade that can be worth while, even staying behind the curve.

Hardware has it's own cause for needing upgrades: it breaks down. My brother-in-law's motherboard decided to do a little agricultural realestate deal recently. My laptop's starting to go. Both of these particular examples were very old, relative to the eighteen month curve. Here's where one needs to ask the same questions as one would with a car. When does it stop paying to upgrade, and just buy a new PC. For myself, I may replace the CD-ROM in my laptop, so I can put Linux on it (I'll still replace the whole thing, I just don't like old hardware to go to waste). For my brother-in-law, it was buy a new PC.

When all's said and done, I don't have a whole lot of knowledge about computers. I just work with them often and am not afraid of opening then up. This is where I get the expert status. It's not so expert. I've had worse luck with computers I've built myself (maybe there's some sort of infection from having it open for so long. Maybe I need to push antibiotics after the surgery...). They often fail faster and in more severe ways. Yet, people keep asking me questions.

Fancy that.