Posted on 10/23/2026 1:10:58 AM PDT by CharlesOConnell
Please don't read this if you can only absorb what's on the outside of a package, or the top 1 idea in a string of ideas. It's more likely you'll get mad at me, then I'll get nasty-grams from you, but it won't make either of us "healthy, wealthy or wise".
Why not just skip this?
I'm buying a new computer I don't need because 1) everything electronic may soon go through the roof, microchips becoming scarce or expensive because of friction between the U.S. and China, with China restricting supply to us of rare earth elements necessary for chip manufacturing, 2) scarcity of helium and sulfuric acid necessary for electronics manufacture from the Gulf, [don't get furious with me if I'm wrong, I didn't take any science, stats or economics], 3) problems shipping from overseas where most chips are made & assembled into products, due to shortage of diesel and its cousin, ship fuel.
Please don't flame me, I'm just trying to get ahead & do friendly chat about it, I don't claim to understand technicalities, "It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing".
I am very active purchasing things I will need from overseas right now. Soon I expect to be buying nothing.
It could be predicted that our great old stuff may suddenly get valuable in a brisk used items market on Facebook Marketplace and even Craigslist. Many of us have observed how great some old stuff used to work before elimination of useful features because of 1) greed (I.E., things Microsoft software used to do that it doesn't, like, Publisher layout for newsletters getting flushed completely down the john just days ago, or MS-Access desktop database having been used to allowing you to export complete info packages the users could query through, but not add to, but they pulled that plug about 1989); 2) swings in fads of things that used to be extremely useful to essential, that get completely forgotten and, 3) my current favorite, kids deliberately trained to fit in with ginormous companies that only want robots and for them not to make trouble but permanently mark-time in gigantic columns never breaking cadence, not having much ability to make or do things, and not being able even to tell you where things are in large stores in plain sight, amped up to Artificial Idiocy (A.I.) trying to deal with web businesses which are tripping over their own feet.
This is all random. Please don't get hot under the collar with me.
I'd heard that during the last Great Depression, price inflation actually reversed, things started getting cheaper but "no one had any money".
The 1929 Depression was within sight of the U.S. rising to world dominance in manufacturing, and our not being invaded since the War of 1812, we were on the upswing.
If this offends you, perhaps with a morbid fear of death, watch something witty -- we watch videos of naughty pets.
A coming crash could completely reverse the slope of the 1929 Depression, because we're losing our commercial and manufacturing dominance, and some expert predictions say that while there was a 115% business downturn in 1929, if & when there is a perfect storm of which 2008 was just a small squall, then next thing may have a 130% downturn in business activity.
During Covid you couldn't get garden seed including vegetable plants, and there was a rush in demand for bicycles.
I'm sorry if this is upsetting. Please try to keep civil.
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The Grim Reaper will not stalk you if you stock up on staples, like rice, beans, pasta & tomato sauce, and frozen shredded cheese that works just fine in regular cooking, just because it might make you think of hopeless mother pictures from the depression, and put the fear of death in you.
Your food plan like at ready.gov, can just be as little as 3 months supply of things you use now, just in slightly less fresh form so you have to fix them slightly different.
You don’t have to get big containers of MRE or whiz-bang Prep Food that will last 20 years, where you will probably only live 7.
You might have fun carrying on like Vern in Tremors (A**blasters) with his staving off Noah’s Flood in his basement arsenal, you just change the cooking recipes of things you already cook or that you haven’t fixed in years but you liked it then.
But an EMP from Iran over Little Rock will slightly change how you do everyday living things.
So look on the bright side, even if it means bending over and kissing your Harvest Moon goodbye.
I am about to buy a overpriced used 6 yr old graphics card because the new ones are ridiculously overpriced.
a old RTX 3070 for around $300 or so.
A modern RTX 5070 goes for at the moment $750-1000
After that i am probably buying 6 yr old memory, processor and motherboard.
All to build my “NEW” computer to replace my 12 yr old one.
ugh..
i have a feeling that we are all intentionally being pushed into subscription-based cloud computing.
You can do what I did and build a fantastic computer for hundreds less money by making it State-of-the-Art - of last year’s or the year before’s standards - using the Tom’s Hardware article base.
Best hurry, though, as even older hardware is being bought up and incorporated into the new server warehouses called “data farms” driving prices up across the board.
The best reason to vuy a car now is because you are buying cars that arent yet legally tracking you.
Good idea
Modern PC hardware is over-powered for somebody like me anyway.
I don’t plan on running GTA:6 on three 8K monitors pumping 200FPS or anything like that.
What is driving me CRAZY is how Nvidia has compromised everyone on VRAM capacity and performance.
Want more than 8gig with a desirable GPU? NOPE or BIG bucks..
want a desirable GPU with more than 8gigs? NOPE or Big bucks..
Want more than 8 gig with a fast 256-bit bus? Nope or big bucks..
I bought an IBM-PC system in 1982. Two floppy disk drives. 128k of RAM. A dot matrix printer. Monochrome green screen.
$3500 in 1982 dollars! You could get a very nice late model used car for that, then.
But prices have gone up for RAM and storage due to the AI push. There is a chip shortage caused by AI build out. SSDs are 3x-4x what they were a year or two ago.
yea i pan on doing that.
take the vid card, if i’m buying a older 30 series i am buying the best one available at the time like a EVGA FTW3 or ASUS ROG Strix.
Get a older CPU that perfectly matches the GPU and no more.
Get a used or new top-rated MB of the time with only the features that i need
Quality fast RAM..
One could easily build a older top-rated PC for fairly cheap $$
A couple of nits:
The U.S. is still the largest market in the world. Other markets still need ours.
I had MS-Access available to me as recently as last year, when I retired.
Pay attention to the state of China’s economy.
What you describe is a set of supply chain (network) problems. Networks are not static, but adapt, change and grow in response to their environments or outside forces.
OpenOffice does the same thing. It’s been around since way before MS Office365. I scored points with my boss at our local air museum when I showed him what it was and how it worked (2009). We had a small annual budget that year and for a long time after that. When we upgraded to some newer Windows 7 PC’s (donated in 2014), MS Office was not preloaded and we continued to use OpenOffice until 2020.
https://www.openoffice.org/download/
There are two types of personal computers in the universe - those that are intended to run local AI and those that aren't. For those that aren't, 32G of memory seems to be generous - for those that are, it should at least be expandable to 256G of memory. I now regret having purchased a 128G Strix Halo mini-server for local AI, because I've come to realize I really needed more AI horsepower than I could afford at home.
My own "eletronic prep" for living a more Spartan lifestyle includes getting a refurbed disk player from Amazon and buying used movie disks online.
I am on the BEST computer I have ever had in my 30 years of being on the web. I paid exactly 170 dollars for a refurbished Dell Optiplex 7040 with 1TB HDD and 516 ram from a company out of Michigan. It came with an old monitor and a brand new mouse and keyboard....They buy out big corporations when they choose to upgrade and then juice up the units with new memorey cards and such...170 dollars and it has ALL of the connections for new and older equipment....I have never spent SO LITTLE and been so happy with the end product...It comes with a windows 11 and is legit...I can’t say enough good things about the value of these computers...check it out before you lay down a 1000 dollars or more...Its through Amazon.
I totally agree with you. I’m still using two refurbished Windows 7 Dells from Amazon, bought in 2014 (laptop) and 2012 (desktop). Both were around $200. They’re solid, reliable, have multiple USB ports, and optical drives.
Just for backup, I now am setting up a NEW Dell Windows 10 laptop. I trust Dell, and functionally I expect it to be OK, but the new devices seem so cheaply made. Yesterday, I had an argument with AI as to why there is no way to determine if NumLock and CapsLock are on or off. Mr. AI said that it’s to save a few pennies when producing them.
I tried LibreOffice and it seemed OK, but too ribbon-heavy for me. So I hauled out my disk of MS Office 2003 and installed it. (It installs fine on Windows 10.)
The old refurbished computers ... I’m in love.
Before testing one of the free apps, I did some research and comparison. LibreOffice scored much higher in several/most areas, although in the past OpenOffice was very good — maybe the only game in town at the time.
“I scored points with my boss”
It’s a wonderful thing when you can save money for your employer. I received quite a few Employee Service Awards in the form of $$$$ for doing that. (Plus, it’s fun to use your noggin to figure out ways to do that.)
“I have never spent SO LITTLE and been so happy with the end product”
I totally understand and agree.
” it has ALL of the connections for new and older equipment”
And that’s huge.
“ because you are buying cars that arent yet legally tracking you.”
And no politician or political party is fighting this.
I find that bizarre
I use LibreOffice as my default. It chokes on very large/complex spreadsheets, and its Base module is an unusable substitute for Access. It is well designed, and loads quickly, and is good for 90%+ of Word and Excel docs. It also plays nicer with WordPerfect docs. If you are contemplating a move to Linux, the versions re identical and help[s make the transition simpler.
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