Yarnell fire and new computer

[Matt Graham]

From: Betty I 
> We lost our house in Yarnell to the fire last weekend [...]
> We have good insurance, and it is going to cover replacement cost
> for our computers [...] maybe it would be better to just get laptops?

The real problem with laptops and tablets is that they're pretty much one
piece of equipment.  If any part of a laptop/tablet breaks, you're probably
going to have to replace the entire laptop/tablet.  If you dump a glass of
orange juice in the keyboard of a desktop x86, you can replace *just the
keyboard*.  Try that on a laptop and you might brick the laptop.

The modularity of desktop machines means you can save old components and reuse
them.  Parts of my desktop are 13 years old.  Parts of it are 1 year old. 
This means I can maintain a machine that does everything I want for
($not_much)/year, as I only have to replace the few parts that wear out.

OTOH, I recently bought a Thinkpad E530 (4G RAM, 4 CPU, 350G disk, DVD+-RW,
etc) for $500.  So far, it's worked well.  Any Linux distro would be able to
handle its hardware; its only real problems are that its screen is a little
too small and its touchpad is far too sensitive.  "synclient TouchpadOff=1"
fixes the latter problem.

-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see