[Boatanchors] Why modern gadgets vacuum your wallet when...

[Robert Nickels]

On 11/2/2017 12:32 PM, Louis Ciotti wrote:
> I blame it on band-aid patch after band-aid patch made by developers that are on yearly refresh cycles for computers,

I don't want to take this thread clear off into the weeds by getting 
into "computer wars",  as there is certainly merit to both sides of that 
argument and the factor you cite.  However there is also a trend that 
mitigates the obsolescence problem somewhat - the trend toward cloud 
computing.   Back when most of us probably bought our first PCs you also 
had to buy a diskette (or later, a CDROM) for everything you wanted to 
do with it, but that's no longer the case.   An old laptop sits beside 
my bench just for the purpose of looking up datasheets  online, running 
online calculators, etc - and any old computer will do the job as long 
as it can get to the internet and can run a decent web browser.

Of course you need to run Linux, not the latest flavor coming out of 
Redmond.   There are any number of bootable distros that can do 
everything most of us need unless we're doing something that is 
computationally or graphics intense.   In fact a buddy in SC has some 
386 machines running http://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/  - which is 
small enough an entire OS will fit on two floppies (if you remember what 
those are!).

My point is, you can do more with an older PC using non-Microsoft OS 
today than ever before, because to a great extent all you need is a web 
browser.  And the internet, of course.

73, Bob W9RAN