I last bought desktop computers for our company almost exactly four years ago. The AMD Athlon Thunderbird 800MHz processor-based systems running Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional are still going strong, albeit with some RAM, DVD-R/RW and hard disk upgrades.
I used to be a "bleeding-edge" kind of guy, buying a new computer every year, or 18 months at the ouside. However, these Thunderbird 800s chugged along year after year, gradually changing me more into a "if it ain't broke don't fix it" guy.
Yet over the last year or so I was starting to feel that these systems were getting long in the tooth. For example, there were some DVD movie applications that they just didn't have the punch to power.
But I kept holding off until one of our clients came up with an offer I couldn't refuse. While most of our work is translation and editing, I also help out clients with the occasional computer upgrades or assistance with various computer-related problems.
This company had replaced all of its computers with ones running Windows XP over the last few years, and wanted me to be on the same page. That was after hearing me grumble, "this is different from Windows 2000" a few times too many :-). So a few days ago it offered me a $1,000 "retainer" to buy a new computer with Windows XP Professional.
I've ordered a nice 3GHz box with a gig of RAM and dual SATA 200GB hard disks from NCIX, where I've been doing most of my computer-related purchasing since moving to Burnaby.
So I'm finally passing two milestones: getting a computer with a processor measured in GHz, and getting Windows XP Pro.
Posted by Paul at December 5, 2004 08:04 PM