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In September 2010, we walked into a pawn shop in Memphis, Tennessee, and placed a used desktop computer on layaway. Their asking price was $225, and we could pay it off $50 a week. One of these marvelous all-in-one desktops — it came with a wired mouse and a keyboard, and even a monitor.
Four months later, in January 2011, we finally could bring it home. It was huge for us.
No, we were not students or newlyweds, we were not young by any means — even though we behaved like it sometimes. With childlike joy, we set up our computer on the small, wonky corner desk that had been left behind by a previous renter.
2010 and 2011 were the years when we restarted our lives. Back then, in our late 40s, we had managed to live through five months of houselessness. Five long months without a key to a door that belonged to us.
A computer was a big step forward. It felt a bit like a miracle. After we had rented a home, had gotten some furniture, and had earned money too, we were now, again, acceptable members of the American society, which of course meant we needed a computer.
It was a big change for us!
Throughout the years, I replaced the wired mouse with a wireless one, and the keyboard is no longer on a cable either. I added an external hard drive, because I had a feeling that even miracle computers might not live forever.
The pc got slower and slower; it started to make funny gurgling noises a few years back. I always expected that one day it would wave a white flag at me, or it would beg me for a mercy killing, but no, it continued gurgling and living — on borrowed time, so it seems.
Computers don’t have an expiration date, or do they? If they have one, then in our home, it gets ignored like any other end date, that groceries or things might have. Man-made nonsense to lure the consumer to throw things out that are perfectly fine. What do you mean, my chilipowder is not good anymore? I only expired three years ago! 🙂
This week, I finally caved, after it took my old computer two days to back up all my files. 48 hours to make a copy of all the documents, videos, music, and all the wonderful photographs I hang on to, even though I have 20 more of the same object.
I had been watching the computer sales for a while, like a snake that’s just waiting for the mouse to move. Finally, this week, a company offered a sales price that I could not resist, and I ordered a new computer. It arrived yesterday.
I unpacked it today, and in the afternoon, I will set it up, and I feel the same as I did in 2011. A smart monitor and a new PC.
I feel excitement!
When you once had close to nothing left, then you will cherish everything you get from this moment on more than the average person.
Not being appreciative is not an option. Not being excited is not an option either.
This year, we are big spenders, which is so against our beliefs. But it’s like my husband said: “Let’s live a little, life is short, and we can’t take it with us.”
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The computer shown in the picture is not mine, but a much older model, one of the rare original dinosaurs.
I have heard it said the as soon as you take a new computer home to set up it has already become obsolete with all the new technology available and changing fast. The amount of computers in the land fills must be huge by now. They push you need more memory, more speed and better sound and graphics. I honestly think I would still be happy with the first computer I ever worked on that my dad bought in the late 70’s early 80’s – an Atari 800. It had a card/sign making program, a word processing program and games… that is all I need to be happy. But then the internet took off and we got connected to the world… I will have this computer until it stops working. No need to replace something that still works find. So what if it is slow, where am I going anyway? I can be patient. I hope all the data transferred and you are still feeling that new excitement!
Yeah, it’s good to feel grateful; we sure can get blaze when things are going well. Loving that you are enjoying your new computer. Full speed ahead!
No, I don’t think computers have expiration dates. I think we give it one. I’m impressed that you’re still using a desktop from 2010. I bought a brand new laptop that same year and had since been replaced by 2 brand-new laptops. Basically, it was so slow that it was making me pull my hair out just to do one small thing. So, yeah, we are the ones who assign expiration dates to things like computers.
After my dad died earlier this year I went over to the old house and saw a very old computer there in my old bedroom. I am in my 40s now, that computer I got when I was 16! Sadly I took it to the skip for recycling. 😔 You reminded me of those times I use to use it. Thank you.
Hope the new one serves you well.
I have learned to appreciate things in my life and it has helped me a lot.
You more than got your money’s worth out of that used computer. It served you well. 🙂
Definitely worth getting excited about, and I hope someone picks up your precious old timer and gets tremendous pleasure out of it for a long time to come!
I am very excited. I just have to wait another 9 hrs. for the data transfer (another backup) and then I will hopefully be up and running faster and faster. 🙂
There’s something magical about really appreciating things ❤️
It keeps you grounded and that can’t be bad.
That looks like an old WYSE terminal. Possibly AT&T. 300bps to 2400bps speeds with hardwire to 57.6kbps speeds IIRC. A long , long, long time ago I use to use, troubleshoot, fix, maintain, and install these puppies. It’s basically a serial port with screen and keyboard. I wouldn’t doubt if that box contained remnants of old token ring or other now deprecated networking hardware. There’s definitely serial cables for connecting to mainframe or other computing device and a power cord I bet. I do wonder however if the monochrome screen is green or amber. Amber if WYSE but could be green too.
Symbolics Lisp Machine, likely from the 3600 family, which were single-user computers optimized to run the Lisp programming language. These machines, developed by Symbolics in the 1980s, were known for their high-productivity software development environment and hardware support for features like garbage collection.
Nice, Symbolics and LISP are definitely names I’m familiar so that must have been one of the terminals. Do you know what it was connected to? LIst Processor was the one of the big programming languages competing with COBOL at the time. But “compete” is the wrong word as LISP was geared towards processing voluminous text data and saw it’s application in many of the public utilities at the time and COBOL/Fortran saw their use at the time in higher education and corporate settings being highly efficient mathematics based processing. I was 11 in 1980 and at that time had already consumed the entire System V Release 3 documentation, the “color books”. Cray was still a company with their breakthrough NUMA Q architecture (which Sun Microsystems ultimately acquired and put the end to Cray). Brings back fond memories of when I was but a fledgling hacker.
I love getting a new computer even though it’s a long time in between purchases. I use a MacBook Pro laptop, nothing else for years now. And good philosophy, life is too short!
I will breath again when all is transferred 🙂
I understand the anxiety that comes with getting a new computer, the key has been backups, backups and backups!
I have always felt trepidation vs joy when a new something arrives and I have to “set it up.” The last thing i was excited about? Probably tickets to visit family in Norway.
I do too and I hope that won’t change.
Beautiful
Thank you. It’s perhaps too honest but oh well.
I enjoyed it.