old laptops

Once I get my new Lenovo, I’m going to get rid of my old Dell Inspiron and my Acer Aspire One. For some reason, whenever I’m getting rid of a computer, I like to go back and review some stuff — when I got it, how much I paid for it, whether or not I feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of it, and so on.

I bought the Inspiron in February 2007, so that makes it about four and a half years old. I usually consider three years to be a decent life span for a laptop, so this one has certainly lasted long enough. I bought it through the Dell EPP (Employee Purchase Program), back when I was at NMS, my previous job. I was surprised to see that I spent $2000 on it. That seems like a lot now — the new Lenovo is only costing me $550, and it’s a pretty good machine, not a refurb or anything. I got a fair bit of use out of the Inspiron. I took it on a few trips, both personal and business, and I used it a lot when my Mom was in the hospital (and later the nursing home).

I bought the Acer Aspire One from Woot in July 2009, so it’s only about two years old. I never did get much use out of it. At this point, most of the scenarios where I could see myself using a netbook, I’m more likely to just go with the iPad. I think, for me at least, the iPad really killed any need for a netbook. If I need a full-featured computer, the netbook isn’t good enough, and if I don’t, then the iPad is easier to lug around and use.

I turned the Aspire One on today, to make sure it was still working, and I took a look at the event log. The last time I had it turned on was March 30. So, five months without any use pretty well indicates that I don’t need the thing. I’ve occasionally thought about wiping out Windows on it and installing Flow or UNR on it. If I did that, though, it would just be for fun; I don’t see any real utility in using either of those on a regular basis.

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