Opaque Lucidity

I Quit The Race---Really

I had to put a new motherboard in our home desktop PC last weekend. It wasn’t an upgrade, really, since the old mobo was only six months old (it was acting funny, and not in a “ha-ha” kind of way) and the new one used the same chipset. But I also replaced our case, so everything looks new even if it isn’t. And since I got to experience that new electronics smell (you geeks know what I’m talking about), it was a Good Thing.

Then, my new copy of Maximum PC arrived. For the uninitiated, Maximum PC is sort of like the DuPont Registry for computer enthusiasts----full of neat stuff I can’t afford. Every issue is crammed full of information, but I always flip to the PC reviews first. You may wonder why I do this since I haven’t bought an off-the-shelf PC in almost ten years and I never intend to. The reason is that each reviewed PC is compared to what the magazine calls the Zero Point PC. The Zero Point PC is an average, but fast, machine. Our desktop machine almost exactly matches the specifications and performance of the Zero Point PC.

Until this month. This month, the Zero Point PC was upgraded to reflect current top-notch machines. If I were to build such a machine, it would cost the better part of $3000 (that’s just for the PC, not the monitor, keyboard/mouse, etc.). The specs are staggering, but some of the reviewed PCs are even faster. This leaves us with a PC that, overall, is about a year old but is already being left in the dust.

So I quit. There was a time when a nice rig would be considered fast and new for about a year. Now, you would have to upgrade every six months in order to keep up. It’s not that I need a PC this fast----but like motorheads, I like having the horsepower at my fingertips.

My only hope is that some sort of “Classic PC” movement will take hold just as it did with automobiles. Then, when our PC is four or five years old, people will look at it and say, “You’ve got a 6800GT in there? Man, those were sweet!”

I think I’ve gone ‘round the bend.