The Song Fight Bulletin Board

This whole upgrading and updating thing is frustrating the hell out of me. I'm not a computer person really but do try and keep abreast of things, but you look away for a minute and it's all changed. It just seems to be moving faster and faster. What's that rule about CPU speeds doubling every six months or something like that. So, specifics.

I use mac osx and was very happy when I made the switch a few years ago, but now Jaguar became Panther and now Tiger. I don't want to keep upgrading all the time. Why? Because I have a pretty stable system that works. I can do all my music on it and other tasks. But I know at some point I will have to upgrade, just due to incompatibility issues. Perhaps I should have one computer just for music or whatever, but that's not very cost effective and I'm poor. I've only just paid off my credit card bill for this one and that's taken me two years. Ok, there was a dentist bill in there as well, fair cop. But you see what I'm getting at - where does it all end? It doesn't.

I can spend a grand on really nice guitar and that's it. I buy some strings now and again, I clean it and it gets better with age. But the *kin computer, oh no. Cool, so I got a bigger hard drive, so I can store more stuff, but wait now I do everything at a higher resolution, so I'm back where I was really. I got a faster CPU, but all the software uses more calculations, which again pretty much leaves me where I was. And as for the OS, I don't know. Before I can even think about upgrading to Tiger, I have check for hardware and software compatibility. And what if some of my software is not compatible, then I have to upgrade that. But then at some point I will find that the new upgraded software needs a faster machine, and bingo, they got you.

And there's the web of course. It's all done for the latest browsers, and if you have something that's older than I don't know, maybe 2 years, then you can't browse. Upload and download speed gets faster, but files get bigger, so you're left where you are. So what next? You need even faster. Still, broadband is a huge jump from dial-up, I'm not complaining about that.

But here's a question to you programmer types and those that may be in the industry - how long will it be till I am forced to upgrade? OK, you need some specs. Right. Let's say I pop down to the mac shop in Regent Street and whip out my credit card and buy the biggest shiniest G5 with Tiger and all the trimmings, Logic Pro 7 and what not, how long can I go without upgrading anything? The question assumes that I will be in contact with the rest of the world i.e. I won't be sitting in my shed making tunes with it, but going online and all the various 101 things that a computer is expected to do nowadays. How long? Realistically? 2 years? 3 years?

Oh well, I'm going have a look on e-bay for some cheap RAM as I only have 1.5Gb, and this webpage is probably almost that.

Maybe you'd be better off with a dedicated offline system just for music stuff. You can get it set up the way you like, and if it works the way you need it to, then there you go. No need to keep up with the joneses, at least with that machine.

Or just set up a computer system for recording and that is it. Get it to work once and it will work much longer than if you try to keep up with the latest and greatest.

Ken

If it does what you want it to do, why upgrade? There's not much difference between a computer setup that does what you need it to do and an "offline" hardware setup that does what you need it to do. Get it working and only upgrade when you find yourself itching to do more. Most people upgrade their system before they've truly mastered their current one.

Ask Jeff of ADD Music what system he used to record his Albumfight and Dirty Water.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

JB

I have a laptop I bought used, it was still configured and had unknown miles of abuse built-in. I used it heavily the last three years, filling the HD to within 25 MB 4 or 5 times (this is bad practice). I installed all sorts of shareware, etc. (generally under other accounts, but on the same system). It worked, but was getting slow (fragmentation and what not) and I could never recover a large amount of disk space. So I decided to back-up and zap the HD with zeros, and upgrade to Tiger and reinstall everything. Now I have 19 GB free and only the stuff I need.

I love my laptop now. But I think you'd agree I waited till the last moment. Tiger's cool, but not required.

Yeah, maybe that's the way to go. My system with all it's hardware and software and all the tinkering I've done inside the machine is all pretty solid and stable. Even my wife has stopped using her laptop and has her own user account. So maybe I should stop worrying about the whole upgrade thing and just continue to use what I have until I'm forced to do so. Like maybe in 2 years time when they come out with "ocelot" or lynx or whatever. I just run this machine into the ground so it dies of old age rather than retires, then I can buy a G5 or whatever that is current now, but second hand in a couple of years time.

Much as I like the idea of having a second machine, I have neither the space nor the cash for it at the moment.