Indecision 3

I want to buy a new computer. I’d been planning to buy a new computer around now, until Apple pushed back the release of its new operating system, Leopard, from WWDC (which was last week) to October.

Common sense says I should wait the four and a half months it’ll take for Leopard/iLife to come out, thus saving myself about $200 (129 for the OS, 70ish for iLife), and probably getting a slightly faster computer in October.

The extra 40 seconds it took that sentence to appear after I started typing it are making me think, “Fuck common sense.”

The computer I have works great…on occasion. Other times it’s so painfully slow I want to throw the fucking thing out the window, with one simple task sending it spinning into 20 minutes of total uselessness.

I can’t add any more RAM (lower slot’s blown), so that’s not an option. And I still have several gigs free on my hard drive, so that’s not the problem. The computer’s 3.5 years old, so I think it’s just simply old and tired.

Money at hand is not the issue. Again, I thought I was going to be buying a new computer now, so I saved and I have the money for a new computer now.

The inconsistency is what makes it hard to pull the trigger. If it were always awful, the decision would be made. But sometimes it’ll work just fine, even for several hours.

The other reason it’s hard to justify: Part of the reason I’m noticing all this is that I’ve been working from home because of my ongoing foot troubles.

Even if I were to order right now, I’ll likely be back at work, where I have a much faster computer (than this one, the new one would be even faster than my work one), before I get much of a chance to use the new one.

Maybe I’m just being a cheapskate, though. The question is: Is $200 enough money to suffer through until October with my current computer?

After trying to write this post and having the computer seize up on me three times between writing and proofreading, I think the answer is no.

Edited to add: Yeah, I officially cracked. It’ll be here either Friday or sometime next week. Yay!