OT: How much of a tech junkie are you?
AllenArt
Posts: 7,140
I was posting in another thread and listed all the computers I own and realized how much of a tech junkie I am ;). My new baby is a mid-2010 white unibody MacBook that I upgraded to 16 gigs of ram and a 2tb hard drive. I haven't had a Mac for a long time, but mostly I just wanted to have some fun and work with hardware again for a change...hehe. It runs High Sierra and is nice and fast - I'd put it up against some of my Windows laptops (which are much newer). Not bad for an 8 year old machine.
Anyway, here goes my list of all the crap I own. In my own defense, I use them all (except for maybe the tablets - I detest typing on a screen):
My phone (Google Pixel 1st gen) - I can take or leave a phone to be honest...I used my hubby's hand-me-down Note 3 for years until recently
Nook HD+
Amazon Fire tablet
old iPad 1st gen (at this point it's kinda useless but I loved it when it was still being updated)
Kindle Paperwhite (I do use this...I like to read)
__________
Dual 8-core Xeon desktop with 64 gigs of ram and a GTX 980ti (6 gigs), dual 27" monitors (my desk looks like a cockpit...)
17" MSI gaming laptop, 16 gigabytes of ram and a GTX 970M (6 gigs)
17" HP laptop, 8 gigs of ram, quad core intel (running Kubuntu 18.04 atm...didn't do well with Windows 10 and runs better with Linux)
15" Dell laptop, 6 gigs of ram, dual core intel (still runs great, just not good for rendering).
12" HP Chromebook (works great for when I'm sitting in the doc's office - my second home).
13" White Unibody Macbook (other than the dirty rubberized bottom and a few very fine surface scratches, there isn't a ding or a crack on it)
....and those are just MY computers and gadgets...lol. My hubby has a collection of tablets and three computers of his own. :P
When I put it in writing, it just looks ridiculous. LMAO. But it is what it is. Heh. Also, right now I have about 20+ terabytes of storage space, give or take a terabyte ;)
Anyone else wanna join the Techaholics Not-So-Anonymous meeting?
Laurie
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My name is Greymom, and I am a Tech Junkie. Somewhere in a box are the parts for the computer I tried to build around 1968 out of surplus telephone switching parts. I still have my old Sinclair computer somewhere, and my old original Pong game worked last time I tried it. Atari 400, 800, 1200 2600 5200 still around. Commodore Vic-20 in a box in the shop. The mammoth 50-amp 5-volt non-switching power supply I built but never used is in the shop. Got rid of all 10 of the old ADM-33a dumb terminals except one (hey, they were free!). I was strong enough to resist the PDP-8 and PDP-11 and the two ancient Dell servers they offered me at work...but I kept one old magnetic core plane memory board. Finally got rid of my old Heathkit ocilloscope. Still have PC's from 286 up, including a rare AMD K6-III. I am typing this on an computer with an ABIT motherboard and a Core 2 Quad 6600 CPU.
Since I noticed the scout truck for the "Hoarders" tv show driving slowly by my house, I have been re-homing as many parts and useful computers as I can, building or upgrading computers for friends and neighbors. I have asked friends to please not bring me any more old machines for my "collection", particularly no more half-functional laptops. Can't find any takers for the two old SparcStations (they were free too!). Trying to resist the siren lure of ebay....wow...look at the price on those XEON E5-2680V2's....sigh. Anyone need any socket 771 or 775 motherboards? Free to a good home!
But it's ok....I can quit any time....soon as I get the renderfarm built..... : p
It was SUPER hard for me to give up the old iMac (yeah, the one that looked like an old portable TV) and my beloved 9800 68k, along with my (get this) Syquest drive with about 30 cartridges....lolol. They took up the entire shelf in my bedroom closet at the time :P. I also had a zip drive and a jazz drive. Not sure what happened to those...I think I lost them in a move ;).
Recently I had my hubby clean out the shed and I think he still had some EDO ram in there...lmao. He doesn't like to throw anything out....just in case :P.
We both tell ourselves we can quit anytime also...but considering I just bought that MacBook last week....
Laurie
Yeah, you are right....I just got the 6th X8DTT-F blade server board for the renderfarm (less than $50 for a $1200 board, like new!)....My sons will intervene if I'm not careful...but I will be able to run Carrara or Cycles or Luxrender, and maybe the non-avx version of Vue Render, on 12 Xeon X5660 CPUs (72 cores)...then maybe I will stop....oh who am I kidding : )
Wow, a Syquest drive, that's a collectors item! Still have some machines in the shop that use EDO ram...need to haul those to the computer recycle place.
..sort of have become a tech junkie.
I have:
an 18 year old burned out HP notebook that was overclocked (don't know why I keep it)
a 16 year old old 32 bit 1 GB Toshiba Techra with a 2 GB HDD
a 12 year old 32 bit duo core Toshiba Satellite with 4 GB memory and 325 GB HD (my former rendering system which now has a dead display though easy fix) which still has a lot of useful programmes on it that only run on XP
an 8 year old Dell 32 bit notebook with 4 GB memory a 160 GB HDD which I take to my gaming sessions (also XP so it never sees the Net).
A 4 year old ASUS notebook with Ubuntu Linux that needs a new charging brick but otherwise is in good shape and starts up fine (this was left behind by the people who in the last place I lived in when they vacated).
Two desktop PCs.
When I moved from my old residence of 17 years, I donated my old Pentium 133 (which ceased functioning), with a whopping 8 MB of memory, 135 MB HDD, dual 1.44 MB 3" floppies, CD-ROM drive, external 33.6K line modem, Soundblaster AWE32, and ATI Mach 64 video card, to the local geek co-op along with the 20 Kilo NEC Multisync colour CRT monitor (which still worked fine and had no discolouration or burned in phosphor). The case for that system was about ten inches taller and a couple inches wider than the one I currently have for my 5 year old homebuild (all steel as well) but only had provision for a single fan. This was my Net system, back in the Netscape Navigator and usenet days, and the had one of early versions of Photoshop for Windows (which was primarily a photo touch up programme with a few extra "art" tools).
That baby was a "piece of history".
the old puter with windows ME in storage area with the unused 'new' one still in box with xp. I haven't had time to switch ou the video card yet lol. 2 laptops that work one with windows 10 other xp. 5 laptops that have various op systems and problems. one tablet for the wife to play solitare with. and to top it off .... she and I both still have flip phones lol
If any of the printers/puters/televisions in the neighborhood go bad or have problems they call the old white haired man not the kid next door.
...I still have a flip phone which I use as my alarm clock. Keeps accurate time, auto updates for DSL/Standard time and if the power goes out it still works (as long the battery has a charge, usually he to recharge about every three weeks).
Actually kind of miss using it as the plan I had with it was a lot less expensive however then I'd have to carry that "exact change" to pay cash fares on our transit system as they are doing away with paper tickets and passes leaving, the only option a "smart" (I question that) tap card that really is only economical if you are a daily commuter or a mobile app that lets you download "tickets/passes" to your smartphone (I use the latter as it lets me purchase a full "day ticket" so I don't have to worry about ticket/transfer expiration times when I'm out and about). Also to load the tap card I would have to physically go to a transit sales outlet (like a grocery store) whereas for the phone app I can just order "tickets" online from the comfort of home. I could even find out when buses were arriving or if they were late with the flip phone by calling their site (which I had on a "one touch" dial) and entering the stop ID number.
Upgraded Amiga 1500.
Core 2 Duo Laptop (Sony)
I7 920 triple channel memory.
I7 4870 or something like that
Scan 3XS Laptop for college.
AMD 1950x Threadripper
(Dell / Alienware Work Laptop, so not really counting.)
I'm in denial, but I'm getting better.
I was a PC "fix-it" guy for the last 10 years and had a house full of computers and computer parts new and old & several experimental network layouts between them. However, I've gotten rid of most of the old computers except for two old Dell XP machines that I use to play my old Myst games with. Other than that I've got my main desktop (HP, 8Gb, 2TB, +6 external drives), a secondary desktop (8Gb, 1TB), an 8 year old HP laptop, a cheap Android phone that is only used for talking through (rarely), a couple of large(ish) flatscreen TVs, a Garmin map navigator and a DashCam in the car. That's it. Oh, except for the 5-shelf storage rack full of boxes of mice, keyboards, misc. computer cards & bits, assorted screws, a box of power cords in my kitchen. Then there there's my wall of 12 "BankerBox" storage drawers filled with obsolete software, archive CDs, LAN cables, Serial cables, Video cables, RF cables, old phones, old cassete players, old DiskMans, old modems, etc.
But despite being deeply immersed in the computer world since 1968 running computer labs, designing RT & MT OS's, designing graphic display control systems, designing & analysing networks, I really don't like modern high-tech gizmos. I never text. I do all my Internet stuff on my main desktop. I'm practically a luddite.
I miss my Razor...now THAT was a sexy looking phone ;). Not a slab like every phone out nowdays...hehe.
Laurie
I just realized I still have a couple of 8 inch floppy disk drives....and several 10, 20 and 30 MB (yes, megabyte) hard drives....probably not going to need those.
Probably don't need a whole box of RS-232 cables either...
Not just a tech junkie, an unrepentant tech junkie...
Good thing I was a chemist and not an electrical engineer (the math terrified me), or I would probably have even more hoarded techno-junk. : p
What's driving me now to seriously downsize my hoard is the realization that if something happens to me, my sons will be stuck getting rid of it all....
Those old X58 tri-channel RAM motherboards are like classic cars! Still have two in service.
I couldn't even begin to list everything.....but I can list a few highlights.....
MainPC - AMD FX8370, 24GB mem, 120GB SSD, 4TB + 2TB + 1TB HDDs, EVGA 970 GTX GPU on two 27" IPS LCDs
Rendering/Gaming PC - Intel i7-6800k, 32GB DDR4-2400 ram, 240GB SSD, 4TB + 1TB HDDs, 2x ASUS STRIX 1080 GTX GPUs, 40" 4K monitor
ASUS ROG G750JX Laptop - i7 cpu, 16GB ram, 256 GB SSD, 1TB HDD, BD-ROM, 770M GPU, 17.3" screen
(About 6 various PCs, and 8 laptops)
Sparcstation 20, Sparcstation 5, SGI Indy, SGI Indigo2, SGI O2
Kaypro 2000 luggable "laptop" : http://oldcomputers.net/kaypro2000.html
A couple of old Mac IIs....
Parts, more parts, and even more parts.
(being an electrical engineer and software developer, I tend to hoard parts. And PCs. My desktop at home has a quad montior stand with FOUR 27" monitors, next to the wall mounted 40" 4k I game on.)
Not at all. I'm a "does this function well enough for my purpose? Well all right then, let's ride it until it is no longer functioning"
I have the 3rd or so cheapest Moto phone (and hey it actually has 54gb of storage with a slot for an SD card so I can stick a decent amount of my music in flac format on it).
The plastic on the bottom of my laptop is cracking in the corner so I'll probably have to get a new one soon-ish (and it's lasted more than 5 years despite the fact that it's keyboard no longer functions, don't eat at your laptop kids)
My Zune finally gave out last year, sadly, but I'm dealing thanks to the aforementioned phone storage space (although even up to the end my zune's battery life was truly excellent)
Thing I'm most proud of though is that my first laptop still technically works. It's from 2002 or so? I mean the bottom third of the screen is just grey, but I used it like that for at least a year (and I'm pretty sure that overlapped with using DS) I had a whole setup: I had the start bar placed vertically on the side... Good times.
I'm basically a tech hipster. I don't think I'd know what to do with myself if I had anything state of the art. Where's the sense of accomplishment if your computer makes things too easy for you?
Mild tech junkie, I can use Alexa on my phone to check and set the temperature of my Air Conditioner (LG). Also turn on some lights.
I definitely fall into this category...
Main machine: Home built January 2013: i7-3770k: 16 GB ram, Total HD space 5.25 TB (256 GB SSD system drive, 3 TB app/data drive, 2TB media drive), Nvidia 1070 Founders Edition, 27" 4k monitor, 22" 1080p touch screen, water cooled. I just picked up a Corsair k68 gaming keyboard (Cherry MX Red keys) and a Logitech gaming mouse. I use this for my DAZ work
Laptops/2-in-1s:
Tablets:
Phone: LG G6. I also have my old Nokia Lumia Icon that still works as a small tablet for my daughter to play with.
Consoles:
Smart Home
My wife also has a desktop and two laptops.
I am sort of a tech junkie. I have:
1) 2011 HP 8470P Elitebook that I upgraded to an i7-3630 CPU, 16GB RAM, and 222GB SSD / 2TB SSHD
2) 2003 iPhone that I miraculously still have & works, but I use it as a 'online number' when I have to give out a number at some online sites. I have T-Mobile Prepaid & it stays shutoff most of the time.
3) iPhone SE with iOS 11.x
4) Android TV Box with Android 6.x (plan to upgrade that to one that does Android 8 so it will be using 'Vulkan' graphics API
5) Acer Iconia Tab 8 with Android 4.4.2 which I won from intel for a game I published using Unity 3D (no DAZ assets in that game but I did user Smith Micro Poser assets for part of it). I've love to upgrade the Android version to Android 7 which the tablet could easily do but Acer isn't going to do that.
6) HP Stream 7 that runs Windows 10
7) 55" Sceptre TV
8) Samsung BR / DVD but only the DVD is region free so the claim on Amazon that the BR was region free also was a lie
9) The 1st laptop I bought was a 2002 Toshiba M205 with builtin Wacom digitizer and even wifi way back then.. The price was pretty ridiculous (for me, I know others to buy such computers every year or two). It runs 32 bit SW only but it still works quite good running Windows 7 actually. It actually is maxed out at 2GB RAM but can run Blender 2.79b and Sketchbook comfortably, except one wouldn't want to render on it. However, as a browsing computer, which with it's size, weight, and stability, make it ideal for, it is now practically useless which tells you a lot about modern browser SW resource usage and coding efficiency or lack thereof. Also of course it struggles to play back video using these more modern codecs on YouTube, which it is ideal size for, so also not a good YouTube browsing experience. Windows 7 is the newest Windows OS that it can run.
When I was younger I was quite in love with technology, but as I got older technology became somewhat of a disappointment...
To be fair, mostly that's consumer tech... Stuff designed for serious usage, stuff designed to get a job done... I'm pretty okay with mostly... Mind you, none of that I own, but I'm fortunate in that I've got friends who are doctors and scientists and they have the really cool toys, and on occasion I've had a chance to play around with their stuff, on one occasion actually fix something and often when it comes time for stuff to be recycled or junked, I sometimes get to divert these things to my parts collection.
Consumer tech... I find really disappointing... There is too much stuff that is dumbly dumbed down. There is a lot of trying to squeeze every last drop out of older tech, and an equally great abandonment of perfectly good tech for half baked newer, shinier tech that doesn't really live up to its hype... Not to mention overhyped or "must have" tech.
Never mind the desire by manufacturers to (poorly) attempt to connect everything to the Internet Of Things... (AKA: "the IOS" and the "S" don't stand for "things")... And don't get me started on some of the ridiculous EULAs and sneaky data mining nonsense as well as this ongoing effort to strip consumers of all their rights, especially and chiefly the right to repair.
Technology should make your life easier, safer or in the very least a bit more fun... It should be seamless and shouldn't add steps to complete a task... (Like if without tech, it took three steps to do something and with the enhancement of tech, it take four or five... unless you've added something to seriously compensate, you've done nothing, especially when subsequent versions actually add another step)... Don't get me started on multifunction buttons and function naming conventions...( if it's a damn lane sensor, call it a "lane sensor", not a "Dynamic Course Corrective Drift Regulator", because nobody will remember what the hell "DCCDR" stands for and when the little "DCCDR" light goes on, people will either panic or ignore it.)
I still like technology, I'm definitely not against it... But it should have reason, a benefit or at least do something that justifies its price. Technology bastardized into some dippy gizmo that everyone has to have, just muddies the waters for everything.
One thing cool is that most of the people I know tend offer me their broken gizmos before they toss them, and I love taking stuff apart and salvaging whatever parts I can... Motors, switches, sensors, cameras and all manner of electromatronical wonders (for repurposing in some later madness, of course)... One thing I truly enjoy is when I open something up, something that I've opened up a lot of, but in this model someone went that extra step, took that extra moment and designed something really cool... They probably got fired because it actually wasn't a piece of crap, but the thing actually makes you stop and go "cooool... Now that's brilliant". I have a little box of stuff that is so cool I'll probably never use it for anything, but I just had to save because it was so well thought out or incorporated.
So... No, not a Tech Junkie (well, I do collect tech junk)... Maybe a former technophiles who is overly misunderstood and mislabeled as either a "disgruntled Luddite" or a "maniac who is probably building a killer robot" (it's a "Slightly Homicidal Fairly Autonomous Mobile Electromatronical Entity", thank you)...(sheesh)... but I suppose it's however you choose to look at it.
It does still work and can pull reasonable performance.
Well, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one being continually bombarded with nearby high electromagnetic fields....lol.
Laurie
...that's what my 5 year old homebuild has. LGA 1366 socket and up to 24 GB of three channel memory.
...kind of like all the "idiot lights' on cars today.
Of course here in Portland, the reason why no one uses turn signals was once when they touched that little lever on the steering column, a light on the dash began to flash ominously which led them to believe they did something to the motor so they make sure never to touch it again.
I guess I should mention that hubby just got a 4k tv for the bedroom and I hate it. Makes everything look like a 1970s video broadcast of Barney Miller. Totally kills that lovely soft look of film. TVs, like phones, are another thing that I can take or leave. LOL. If the old tube TV were still working I'd be watching it :)
Laurie
..the last television I had I got at a hotel auction for 30$. Blew up back in 2002, never replaced it.
The wooden penguin I had on the top survived albeit fell off and broke a foot.
Well, I got rid of the 4 RS/6000s and the 7-cart tape library a few years bak, though I still have an RS/6000 and a 20-port 10MB ethernet switch in the shed. And seven tty->2780/2780->tty protocol converters in the basement, along with the physical HDA from a 3380 BD4. I got rid of the glass bubble displays back when the annual recycle event was taking them for only $20 (27 inch and two 25 inch monitors and a 32 inch TV).
I've an Atari 400 and an 800XL in the attic, along with the controllers, disk drives, software, and the 40-column 4-color printer. And a 132-column Okidata dot-matrix centronics interface printer (the Epson MX-100 went with the original IBM PC when I sold it).
I have two original single-density full-height 5.25 inch floppy drives (160 KB storage, $540 each in 1982) and the two Teac double-sided quad density half-height (724 KB) drives I replaced one of them with and a Panasonic HH/DD 5.25 (360 KB) left over from replacing the other one (it's brother and the 32 MB Seagate drive went with the PC).
I've a Hayes 300 baud Smartmodem and a USR Courier 19.2 KB modem tucked away.
Pretty much all the intervening disk drives have been scrapped out over the years - a 670 MB esdi drive ($1600 when I bought it, and capable of cooking eggs when in use) and any number of 200/400 MB and 1.2 GB drives over the years.
I have an old Sager notebook - 256 MB, 4 GB drive, running SuSE Linux, dates from the late 1990s and still working, a Dell M4300 notebook stripped back to XP and ready to donate, a Dell 9100C with 3 GB and 192 GB of disk (two drives, mirrored) also stripped and ready to donate. I'm running a Lenovo Y50 laptop for portable use, have a Dell 7100 mini-tower with 8 GB and two SSD drives (128 GB boot, 256 GB data) - runs my scanner, OCR software, and plays my music and videos. Also a Dell 390N tower, 8 GB, running OpenSuSE - my dial-up network system and financial record holder. And a custom home-brew for rendering - 64 GB, a 500 GB SSD system drive, a 500 GB, two 1 TB and two 2 TB internal drives.
External drives - a pair of 1 TB and a 2 TB USB not currently in use, seven 2 TB and four 4 TB usb drives for backups on the various systems.
And a perfectly functional but no real value Quantum DLT-7000 tape drive in an external enclosure (35 GB native, 70 GB if the data compresses well - but MP3, MP4, and jpeg are already compressed . . .). I got rid of all my QIC tape drives and tapes years back, and both my Iomega drives hit the cl1111ick of death within a year.
And I don't have a clue on how many ink-jet printers I've given up on; seems every time I wanted to print something I had to clean the inkjets, usually more than once. I have gone through 3 laser printers - two B&W and one color. I'm currently into my 3rd year on a Xerox 6500DN (four color with duplexer, 20+ PPM).
Not as much of a tech junky asI used to be. :-)
I'm more of an enthusiast than a junkie, but mainly for computer relates stuff. I don't own a smart phone, although my flip phone is semi-smart...
I don't upgrade often, and tend to squeeze the life out of my stuff. I switched over to laptops in the mid-2000's, as they've become nearly as capable as desktops, and squeezed about 10 years out of my last 17" laptop, before upgrading to this 18.4" beast I have now. I also have a 13.3" 2 in 1 that became my main laptop for a few months when the 17" finally died. I learned how to use Daz on that 13.3"...
The high core count processors (Epyc, Threadripper) intrigue me, but I've been holding off. When I finally build that render box, well that'll be the first Desktop I've bought in over a decade
As for other tech, yeah when I buy I try to find the best one, but I don't buy home electronics often. Mostly I read up on the latest developments on a few tech sites and watch Nova a lot...
...went the other way from notebooks for CG work because of cooling issues, limited upgrading/expandability, and higher cost for the sake of portability. Upgraded the CPU, memory and installing a Titan X into my main system, the first and third items being something I could never do with a notebook.
Once again, life imitates art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgoRDYZQMrQ
Did you play with the settings or check the other modes? I bought a 4k TV late last year and after some calibration to the "cinema pro" mode, and it looks great for movies - none of the overly sharp "Soap Opera/TV video" effect.
I forgot about my HP Stream 7. I wish I could get it to upgrade to the later versions, but since it has such low RAM and SSD space, it won't. Not that I want the new features on the tablet, but I don't want to lose the security updates.