These are the electronic devices I've regularly used for some period of time. All but the last two are either a desktop or laptop computer. It's not as wasteful as you might think. Many of those were temporary computers which I used only while I was in a location, and they moved on to another life. Two of them are Liv's. The ones that I've used the most are italicised. I'm adding a new one today, though. Clarity, a Hewlett Packard Compaq tc4400 tablet. It has my favourite case design so far, and it works well with Linux. It displaces Yojimbo, whose maximum hard drive capacity of 60GB (55GB, really) has been a nuisance for most of its employment. (Yojimbo also has a broken neck, but is otherwise in good condition.)
Clarity is somewhat of an accident. She was cheap off-lease at $300, which was mostly covered by Christmas money collected for the purpose of expanding Yojimbo's hard drive capacity (which proved a goose chase). She surpasses Yojimbo in most ways, being much faster, a bit more RAM, a nicer shell, and already comes with a larger HD (80GB, which I will soon upgrade to 500GB). She's also a tablet. Her disadvantages include being heavier, slightly bulkier, and having two sets of mouse buttons! One for a track pad and the other for a track point; what?!
Now the point of this post. I care about Yojimbo. I also cared about Skedge and Tourniquet. Tourniquet died, but Skedge, a sickly creature, is simply retired at home, and still functional (surprising at its age). Yojimbo, however, is in still mostly good condition. If it wasn't for the ridiculous hard drive limitation, I would probably ignore its occasional underperformance computationally and its ugly design. Someone has already offered to take Yojimbo off my hands, but I'm not sure I'm ready for that. I'd even feel bad setting Yojimbo aside. I already feel bad typing this on Clarity! Hehe.
I might do a silly, sentimental thing and keep both. Yojimbo is more portable. Lighter, slightly smaller, and even better battery life. I had wanted a desktop computer complement Yojimbo. I could plausibly treat Clarity as one, or set up Yojimbo in his dock semi-permanently, and take one or the other with me when needed. This might seem excessive, but most desktops waste a lot more energy than a laptop, I already have a nice secondary LCD monitor, and having a computer at home, on the network, would allow me to have a web server again.
Sentimentality for machines is ridiculous, but I enjoy it.
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