Selling it off. What would you keep ?

From: Mark Tapley <mtapley_at_swri.edu>
Date: Sun Dec 1 10:05:23 2002

On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Lawrence Walker wrote:

> I am at a point where I am thinking about divesting myself of the
> majority of my computer collection.

Good luck! I'm not aware of anyone successfully doing this. But in weaker
moments, I've considered it. Here's my choice(s)

1) Find a worthy recipient willing to take it *all*. Keep a modern machine
only, make a clean break. Farewell.

2) Pick the minimum combination of machines that will do the things you
*need* to do, then get rid of the rest. This may default to option 1). (It
wouldn't in my case - the Mac Plus still has many games I consider
indispensable, and the NeXT is my only Mathematica platform (and is thus
heavily used at work). But I couldn't justify keeping my Rainbow, for
example.)

3) Pick the minimum combination of machines that'll still do all or most of
the things your current collection will do. Rainbow is good here, because
it'll do both CP/M and DOS; Could argue that a NeXT with SoftWindows and
Daydream covers three operating systems (Mac, Win, Unix) as well as
NeXTStep. For Macs, a II and a G4, will probably run all of your Mac
software, etc.

4) Take two aspirin and wait for the aberration (getting out of classic
collecting) to pass. You'll feel horrible if you give it all away and then
start trying to re-assemble a collection.
                                                                - Mark
Received on Sun Dec 01 2002 - 10:05:23 GMT