Time for a new Mac?

2009-02-20 06:38 AM Category General Mac | Beginner | Intermediate

It wasn’t that many years ago when a computer was a nicety instead of a necessity. Of course, that was before the Internet became the center of communications for us.

Think of the changes!

We wrote letters on our computers and mailed them instead of sending an email.
We balanced our checkbooks on the back of the bank statement instead of using Quicken.
We asked our doctors about medical questions instead of going to WebMD.
We read one local newspaper that appeared on our doorstep instead of reading articles from many on Google News or Drudge Report.
We looked up the movie schedule in the newspaper instead of Movies.com.
We had a stack of telephone books to find local businesses instead of doing a quick search on YellowPages.com
We collected catalogs from Sears, Penny’s and Wards to find items that were not available locally instead of using Amazon.com or one of the hundreds of online shopping sites we use today.
We had to wait to have a houseful of friends over to play cards instead of playing bridge round-the clock at BridgeBase.com.

A few years ago, a computer was an extravagance. Now it is a necessity! We probably had one computer that was used once every few days. Now we use our computers many time each day. Most clients that I work with have several computers for their family, even if they are a family of one!

So when is it time to buy a new computer?

That depends on many factors.

Sometimes there is a hardware failure and it is foolish to replace the failed hard drive or CD drive because the computer is so old.
Sometimes the computer is not capable of running specific software that the owner needs.
Sometimes the hard drive is too small, the RAM too little, and the processor is too slow to make the computer useful.

In any case, computers don’t last forever!

Pat