mos6507's Blog - The Treadmill

RSS Bot · October 13, 2009

I think one of the reasons I'm still into classic videogames is I've always stayed on the sidelines of the computer hardware treadmill. I had a Playstation 1 when it first came out, and then proceeded to get very few games for it. I had a PS2 as well and didn't buy many games for it. And don't get me started on PC games. My rig has never been where it should have been to facilitate cutting edge gaming, and so I keep procrastinating on getting into games. The most recent PC upgrade was a Pentium IV 2.4 GHZ system I put together a few years ago. I made the fatal mistake of buying into an PCI+AGP motherboard at the time when everything was shifting to the new PCI Express standard. And I had a graphics card without HDMI, hence no Blu-ray.

I keep waiting for the upgrade cycle to slow down long enough for me to jump on board, but no matter what is current today, something better seems like it's just on the horizon. This paralyzes me from buying anything due to instant obsolescence.

Like when Netbooks first came out, I thought, gee, great, except for the crappy integrated graphics. Now ION is coming out, but wait, ION2 is also on the horizon. Plus Intel has a new class of 32nm chips with 45nm integrated graphics that would work similar to Ion.

And on the desktop front, I was going to rebuild my motherboard with an EFIX board in order to run OSX. So I was going to get a P45 motherboard. But then along comes Core i7 boards. And then comes Snow Leopard that obsoletes my unused EFIX dongle. I would have to use a new EFIX dongle to enable Snow Leopard.

And talk about standards. USB is on its way to 3.0. SATA is already up to 3, right? Now they are talking about Light Peak (fiber optic).

Anytime you get a new motherboard you are stuck with whatever ports are on it and the socket standard. But Intel changes the form-factor of its CPUs constantly. So the odds of doing a processor upgrade within the lifecycle of the motherbaord are slim to none.

And take my daughter's computer. It's a Mac Mini. It's got the core2duo, but the integrated graphics, so when I tried installing Windows on it, games ran like crap. So that computer is effectively obsolete unless I share my rebuilt PC for her. The original Mac Mini I got for my mom is a G4 so that is EOL on the OS front.

And what about my 24" 1080P display? It has dead pixels and the screen quality is not that good. Now these sorts of monitors are dirt cheap, but what do I do with my old monitor? Sell it on Ebay and deal with the hassle?

At the end of the day I really do not like generating all this clutter and eventual ewaste. So even though I can currently afford to stay on the treadmill, my conscience can't deal with the stream of waste involved in doing so. I just don't relate to people who are constantly replacing their computer hardware like it's a new pair of shoes. But will there ever come a time when any of us can kind of settle down with some gear and say "this is good enough"? Every time I jump back on the treadmill, that's what I fool myself into thinking. But it never happens.

And this is the result.

http://www.trade2save.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/ewaste-worker-on-a-mountain-of-e-waste.jpg

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?app=blog&blogid=103&showentry=6536