Equipment, or When Paying More Is Worth It

I am not at home this weekend. I'm dog sitting, so I don't have my computer, I have my mother's. It's not as nice, but it was free. It's also about 5 years old.

I could probably make it a worthwhile machine for $30 in RAM. It'd still be slow as all heck, since it's running windows and five years old, but it'd at least be able to keep up with running the OS, virus blocker, and loading web pages without a 20 minute wait.

This wouldn't work for me, though. Loading a page every 20 minutes is great if all you do is read some AOL mail, look at a couple of pictures of puppies, and sign off. I don't do that. I need to upload photos, stream video, and read blogs (I know, strange needs). When there's a 5 minute lag while something's loading to switch between tabs, that's just not gonna work- what I do at home in 20 minutes has taken me about 2 hours so far this morning, and there are no photos getting loaded anywhere.

While I'm here I'm going to pull their computer case open and see what's inside. I might have a few (free, from previous canibal jobs) parts that will speed things up. If not, at least I can see what they've got and point them in the right direction for picking up some things to fix it up a bit. I do most of their "advice" -type stuff already, might as well fix it up so they don't need to call as often.

Really though? To do something on the internet that earns money (or at least doesn't eat your whole day) you need more than they've got. I *could have* done it on my older laptop. It was designed for battery life and not woot 1337-ness, but it was faster, and sometimes a little upgraded- replacing RAM isn't that tough, even on laptops.

When a netbook able to run graphic intensive games is only $350, there's no real excuse to use something that doesn't work right. Sometimes you don't have the cash (that'd be me, now- but the library could fill in here), sometimes you don't know what you're running isn't enough (that'd be this machine I'm typing on now), and sometimes you just don't care (I don't understand this one, but know it exhists).

Really though, plumbers need pipe wrenches, taxi drivers need cars, and people who do stuff on the internet need computers that are able to do more than one thing at a time.

Should have just brought the desktop to begin with- or double checked that I had the power cord for my slow but still faster laptop. Oh well, live and learn and all that. I'll just bring the cord back with the ram.