[OT] cost effectiveness - was YDL FAQ for Old world Macs

[Eric Dunbar]

On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 11:11:57 -0800 (PST), Norberto Quintanar 

> At what point does diagnosing an old world mac cost too much to fix?
> Cost of hardware and software aside, what value does one put on their
> time to accomplish such an undertaking?  Plus he's already ordered a
> mac mini @ 499 + S/H.  Depending on the market, that's one to two
> days of work for me.  Getting an old world mac to work with 4.0 could
> easily take that much time if not more.  Terrasoft's decision not to
> support OWM's was cost effective.  And to top it off, 3.0 runs better
> on OWM's anyway.  I applaud Geert's decision to buy a new machine and
> retire his 8 year old work horse.

I guess it depends on why you want to get the OWM working.

If it's for sport or learning, then that OWM is worth its weight in
gold. You can't get a better education than getting something working
that requires a lot of effort, even if you're helped along the way by
other's help.

If doing it to save money because you don't have any, then, that's
also pretty cut & dry. If all a computer is to you is a tool and
you've got the money and are willing to spend it but are going OWM b/c
you think you'll save a penny, then it's dependent on how you value
your time.

I stick with slower hardware b/c I don't need anything faster. At home
I browse the web, word process and Excel (there just ain't a better
spreadsheet). I can do that nearly as quickly on my PB G3/400 as on my
PIV 3GHz Win XP Pro machine at work. What I can't and don't need to do
at home is operate on a database with thousands of records... (though,
I wish that one of the secure DB servers was running on faster
hardware... they still use an OS that was already OLD news in 1989 and
I have the strange feeling that they're running it on a relatively
slow (by today's standards) mainframe!!)

Eric.