Just wondering as computers are sorta my hobby and i like messing around with different ones. I havent in a while due to prices going up such as with ram usually. I dont mess with new tech, but i want to know what you guys do with the crazy prices out there? or are you already set before prices went up? Or are you just lucky in some form?
Just curious.
If you like messing around with computers in general, if you keep your eyes open, you can find old, used stuff everywhere. Right now, I am trying to put Core/Libreboot on 10+ year old hardware for fun.
For things that should “just work”… My laptop still runs fine, and hopefully will be the next 5 years as well. Same with my gaming PC. I threw in a used 3060ti right before the AI bullshit took off, and it comfortably runs everything I want it to run with room to spare.
Drives are a bit of an issue, though. Good quality SSDs are hard to get for non-crazy prices, and I don’t want to buy used ones with who-knows-how-many write cycles.
I’m sticking to i7-2600/ddr3 class machines untill the new Enron crashes
I’m just not buying anything new. I need more drive space, but with current prices I’m deleting stuff rather than expanding my storage.
Other than that I’ve just taken up new hobbies like woodworking and homebrewing. I’ve toyed with the idea of tiny arduino type projects but haven’t made the plunge yet.
I started repairing vintage film
camerasI’ve been lucky with my upgrade/build timings. Built my first PC right before the crypto madness, and did my last major upgrade right before the AI madness.
I’m going to run my current system until it crumbles to dust. With any luck, the market will have settled a bit by then.
As for projects, I have lots of old “useless” tech that I can work with. Like old laptops, phones, Raspberry Pis, even mobos and other spare PC parts. Building small is more interesting to me than building big.
Any half rate cook can make top tier ingredients taste good.
A true master chef can create culinary delights from scraps.
Everybody laughed at me when I took a 10-port USB hub, installed a flash drive in every one, and set it up as a RAID array.
Today? With storage prices where they’re at? Think they’re still laughing?
Yes. They’re still laughing at me.
This rules lmao
Mechanic’s car trope: they’re outdated rustbuckets and often half broken 🥲
I work in IT and have admittedly taken some systems we’ve set for recycling to fill gaps or help people out.
Been in IT for 25 years. This is the greatest perk.
I worked for a hospitality company, fortune 500, who had acquired us and had never had an IT department before.
I still have boxes of Cat5e from the wifi installations, who said to pitch the cable into the trash.
I also harvested a switch with just one bad port (48 port cisco catalyst) and when they decided to upgrade the call center with new PCs and were throwing away the old pizza boxes, we were all stuff our cars. I built a cluster, just because, but then started reinstalling Winders XP on them and giving them to friends, family, or selling them dirt cheap to acquaintances.
Yeah from a business perspective replacing hardware makes Load of sense but it’s not always because it’s problematic. We try to donate most of the systems we replace except for the hard drives. I’ve just shifted where the donations occurs a few times when needed.
I tried to do all of my tech purchasing for the foreseeable future shortly after Trump was reelected, based on the assumption that he was going to fuck the economy. Gotta admit I thought the high prices would come from idiotic tariffs instead of idiotic AI, but whatever…
Thats exactly how I came to rebuild my PC. I hate the piece of shit, but I have to thank him for scaring me into building when I did because of the threat of tarrifs. My 64GB of ram was like $200 not the absolutely fucking disgustingly insane $1k or whatever it is now…
