Saturday morning, the power supply in my home file server died. According to Amazon, the power supply was three-and-a-half years old and already out of warranty. The 486 computer I bought in 1996 still has its original power supply. It seems to me they don’t build things like they used to. Or maybe I’m just old.
My server has all my movies, all my music, and all of my data. I have backups (my backups have backups), but accessing them involves physically moving drives around and isn’t as easy as one might imagine. Because my server also handles services like DHCP and DNS, I was pretty motivated to get things up and running as soon as possible. I checked Best Buy’s website Saturday night and found a power supply listed for $39.99. Sunday morning, when I was ready to purchase it, the price had jumped to $64.99. My options were to pay the full retail price, or order one from Amazon, save ten dollars, and wait a day or two for it to arrive. Begrudgingly, I went with Best Buy.
I used to be better at working with hardware. Over time, technology changed and I didn’t. I didn’t have any problems swapping out power supplies, but I was left with a dozen connectors I didn’t recognize. Much like leaving out a few screws when assembling a set of shelves, they must have been extras. Everything fired up, and the server once again lives.
The way I do things, like maintaining a server with a huge array of hard drives connected to it, is an old way of thinking bordering on outdated. When all of my friends were moving to digital media, I was clinging to my CDs and DVDs. Now that I’ve gone digital, everyone else seems to have moved to cloud storage. Maybe someday I will too. Today, I bought myself a few more years with a $64.99 power supply.
I’m with you on things that used to take me 30 minutes taking 2 hours now if new hardware is involved. But when I get my 486 out, things that used to take me 30 minutes to do take about 35. The hardware has changed and I haven’t.
Back when I worked on hardware all the time I didn’t really notice the adjustment, but since I can go a couple of years or more between hardware projects now, it sure does seem like it changes fast.
Think of all the electronic waste you DID NOT create by keeping the machine in service. It may not be the fastest, but it’s fast enough. Your right to repair helps save our planet, keeps from wasting rare earths, and keeps prices lower by creating less demand for new machines.
Cloud is great until it isn’t. Remember being snowed in and without power? Having a generator and local storage on permanent media gives you entertainment even then. Cloud is great until you’re locked in with all your stuff on one provider, who then boils the frog, slowly, steadily costs go up. CPU cycles go from $0.003 to $0.0035. Who notices or changes providers for that tiny increase. That tiny increase is 17%. Next month, it’s storage costs…goin up. Rinse and repeat.
Cloud’s strengths are it’s scalability and reliability. Your repair handled reliability, and scalability is a new $80 hard drive away. Use cloud when cloud makes sense; the rest of the time, save your money. Your content is your own and not subject to third party scrutiny. That’s good when the anti-piracy, big media funded “intellectual property rights” groups come after you because your license doesn’t allow storage on third party media. Before you laugh GTS and see how a housewife ended up with 6 figure fines and judgemens. See here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Network,_LP_v._CSC_Holdings,_Inc. where the district court awarded summary judgment to the plaintiffs and enjoined Cablevision from operating the RS-DVR system. Even if you won on appeal, I can hear the judge banging the gavel and declaring, “Each side to bear it’s own costs…” Even if you could afford this, America cannot.
Keep the old warhorse in harness a while longer is my advice.