Here's an interesting article from Byte magazine: http://www.byte.com/art/9802/sec5/art1.htm It talks about how computers are becoming obsolete the day you buy them due to all the crazy new technologies being released into the market. My observation is that anyone who chases technology and is always upgrading to the latest and greatest is always going to have an "obsolete" computer. The situation is not as bad as the article makes it out to be, not that the article is actually saying the speed of new technology introductions is a problem. But if people could be satisfied with what they have on their desk, this issue of obsolescense would not be an issue at all. In 1995 I bought a Pentium-90 system which I clocked up to 100Mhz. It came with Windows 3.1 but I quickly upgraded to Win95. It originally had 16MB RAM (which I've since upgraded to 32M) and a 1GB HD. It has a 5.25" and 3.5" floppy and a CD-ROM drive. I'll soon be adding another 540MB HD I have lying around spare, and then a 1.7GB SCSI HD as soon as I find a SCSI cable. It's slow by today's standard, but the damn thing works. I use an old version of Microsoft Works (3.0) for my word processing and spread sheeting; some people haven't even heard of Works! They only know Word. But Works loads instantly, whereas Word takes it seems forever to load which is why I don't use it. Plus its bloated and drags my system down. Which brings me to my point. The computers we collect are still so damn useful! And this is not a new argument, but even though these old machines don't have SVGA and EDO RAM and Ultra-SCSI and other new-fangled fanciness, they still work! They can still process words, and crunch numbers and hold information. And best of all, they play games MUCH more fun than the current cache of cathartic creations; DOOM was novel when I first played it, but every other incantation after it (DOOM II, QUAKE, DUKE NUKEM, ETC) is the same game with a different "scenario" and graphics, and that damn bobbing up and down makes me sick anyway! Give me Choplifter, Rescue Raiders or Dino Eggs any day! If you read the article carefully it gives a glimpse of the types of machines that may be collectible in ten years or so. The article proposes the dawn of the age of the "disposable" computer. This is totally ridiculous. I cannot even relate to that mode of thinking. But on the positive side, it means disgustingly cheap (and probably FREE) computers 10, 5, even 1(!) year(s) from now. More cheap PCs for us to run Linux on! (Imagine having your own DLA [Distributed Linux Array] consisting of 16 or more 300Mhz Pentium II PC, alls for just a song! You could break government encryption with something like that :) People these days with their 333Mhz Pentiums with 128MB RAM and 4GB harddrives should shut the hell up and be happy. Long live "obsolete" computers. Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass Coming Soon...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0 See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!