Total Cost of Ownership

Buying a new computer (or at least thinking about it) has got me musing again about how we really own our machines. They're called personal computers and they really are. But how much of it do you really own? Sure, after you purchase it and making it feel at home, you have a great sense of ownership. It's yours, all yours. The thing is, you can't really make 100% use of it.

OK, Windows takes up a chunk of the hard disk, RAM, and CPU. That's a given. It's the operating system, after all. Although there's a lot of Windows components running you usually don't need that you'll have to disable yourself.

Windows isn't the only thing installed on your new computer. The manufacturer will have loaded it with various kinds of trial software and other offers. If you're not conscious about these, they'll be running or just sitting there on your computer, taking up resources even if you don't need them.

To be a responsible netizen, you need to secure it with a firewall, antivirus, at least a couple of anti-spyware and maybe phishing and spam filtering software. If you do enough research, you'll be able to find free and decent software you can simply download from the great Internet cloud. After installing, these security software will have to run every waking moment of your beloved computer.

So, do you really own 100% of your very own, very personal computer? Even if you wanted to, you'll be hard pressed at best to be able to use 100% of the CPU cycles. Same thing with RAM and disk space. Ok, maybe you can use a barebones Linux build. But then, you can't play Starcraft with it.

When you were shopping for your computer, you might have thought "Hey, this CPU is 5% faster than this one." But have you thought about 5% of your CPU's computing resources being devoted your antivirus software for the rest of your computer's life? I'm just guesstimating that 5% for antivirus thing but you get the idea. Who knows? Maybe it's accurate.

We've all taken to accepting all these as part and parcel of today's computing. The way things are today, with Windows in particular, it's necessary. If only there was a totally secure system, we won't need security software. Makes me think about OS X and Linux. They're getting attractive but there are a lot of situations that require working with Windows. Like that dreaded W word (hint: Work). Besides, even OS X and the Linux distributions are not totally secure either. And since there's no totally secure system, we have to live with personal security software. The consequence is we have lost maybe 10% or 20% of computing resources. Alright, so maybe we own 100% of our PC. Only, we can't make use of 100% of it, even if we wanted to. How's that for ownership?

Need a new computer

My desktop will be turning 5 years old in a few months. Pretty soon, I'll have to send it off to kindergarten. Time flies so fast. It seems just yesterday when it was a shiny, fast, happy machine. Now, it's full to the brim with data, its registry littered with so much left-overs from programs I've already forgotten and it loads so many unidentifiable stuff at start up that you can make breakfast before it can finish the boot process. Not only am I running against the 512 MB of RAM installed, I have a nagging feeling there's something physically defective with it. And of course, with its number of years in service, the hard disk could retire any time soon. It could have a useful life of several months or several years more but it doesn't have a way of letting me know.

So, it needs a replacement soon. What a joyous conundrum it is, choosing and shopping for a new computer! If only it didn't have the prerequisite of having the money to afford one. There's no such thing as spare cash in my situation. The hundreds and thousands are all accounted for and they're answerable to the monthly budget.

Maybe I can just pretend it's still the shiny, fast new computer that it once was! Yes, that's it! Ha ha ha.... Nope, it doesn't work.

Apple Safari

I haven't tried it yet but soon. So what's the big deal about another web browser for Windows users? My take on this is... none really. Firefox is more than competent and version 3.0 is shaping up nicely. If there was no iPhone, there would be no Windows version of Safari. Some analysts say Apple is enticing users to come over to the Mac side of the fence. Maybe, but I think that's incidental. Sure, it can happen but the real deal right now is iPhone. The only way to develop apps for the iPhone is through Safari so that's where the action will be, if Apple gets its way.

Apple claims there have been 1 million downloads for the first 48 hours after its release. I say that's a victory for choice. Now, if only Apple will lower the prices of Macs....

Blogging, blogging

Work sure gets in the way of fun. :) For the past months, work has been so heavy there's been little time for anything else. Work gets in the way of living? Hmmm... could be more appropriate.... Anyway, I'm just glad to be able to make new entries in my blog.