In addition to the usual summer slackerdom that afflicts us, we have been plagued by computer woes. Hence, no posts. Basically, our 4 or 5 year old Dell started melting down about 2 weeks ago. The dreaded blue screen kept popping up. Eventually, complete meltdown.
So: what's a frugal family to do? At home we have Frugal Son's MacBook, which is his alone. We also just bought him a teeny eeepc netbook for his semester in France. And we have some desktop in Mr. FS's study that is not hooked up to the internet. The teeny computer has been hooked up to a keyboard and a mouse, so I can type this post. Thanks family!
At first, Mr. FS thought we might take the melted down Dell to the Computer Geeks, where, for $250.00, they will restore the computer to its original state. We have all work saved on a flash drive. This would tide us over till we bought a new computer.
Then, Frugal Son exclaimed:
It isn't worth it to spend $200 (plus extra costs for parts and labor if there were any hardware problems), which is 1/5 to 1/4 the cost of a new Mac desktop, to prolong the life of an old desktop which will probably continue to give us problems.
I agree! I tried to avoid a huge dental expense by getting an expensive filling, which, of course, didn't work. This seems the same.
Anyway, we seek your comments on this. We will not be getting a Dell, because when we bought our current one, we received bad customer service from them. Like the Swedes in Beowulf, who waited 50 years for Beowulf to die so they could exact revenge, we have long memories, and vowed never to get another Dell. This isn't revenge, in my opinion, just an appropriate response to abysmal and time-consuming customer service.
Frugal Son thinks we should go with a Mac, mostly because they are comparatively trouble- and virus-free, but also because they are aesthetically nicer and take up less room on our desk.
So help, Dear Readers. What should we do?
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