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How do you resist buying ever more powerful PCs?

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tomos:
if i start thinking about it more and more and "analyzing" whether i should buy something -- the "analysis" eventually turns into my brain coming up with some poorly rationalized justification of why i should buy it and why it's really not such a large amount of money to spend.  Sooner or later it's almost as if i have to buy it just to stop thinking about it!
-mouser (July 14, 2015, 12:45 PM)
--- End quote ---
a friend of mine says:
- if you want something long enough, then you *need* it...

I was looking at laptops lately and was sorely tempted by a beautiful little Dell (XPS13) -
the fact I couldnt really afford it helped; also the fact you can get it a few hundred dollars cheaper in the States helped turn me against the idea.

I get this problem more with cameras. What always helps there, is reading the serious in-depth reviews: there's always a list of cons that makes it easy to think - no, I dont need this until it's better. (I'm holding out until there's a large sensor compact with at least 10x zoom - which looks like it'll take another few years.)

With laptops or desktops, I'd love silence :)
but beyond that I dont really care what's under the hood so long as it does what I need without struggling.

Giampy:
I avoid to buy a faster PC since I realized that many slownesses are not due to the PC itself. It's useless buying a faster PC when certain slownesses depends on slow Internet servers, slow software, antivirus bugs and activity, and so on.

It's like buying a Ferrari and using it on roads full of potholes...

wraith808:
I don't resist.  ;D

I have made it so that it's easy when I get the urge to switch, however.  I have two decently good cases that I just switch between as I upgrade.

Deozaan:
I generally don't get a temptation to buy more powerful stuff unless there's some aspect of my current gear that I'm very unhappy with. Would I like a faster CPU or more RAM or larger storage? Sure! But what I have is doing me just fine for now. But sometimes I run into issues with things that aren't working to my satisfaction.

For example, for the past couple of years, my GPU has been causing me grief. The GPU itself is pretty good and can handle just about every game I've tried on it at 1080p with the highest settings without issue. And it can almost do the same at 2K (2560x1440). But it has only a single fan, which is of poor quality. It already failed once and got replaced, and the replacement started to show similar signs of failure/wearing out after only a few months.

So every once in a while I wonder if I should buy another GPU. But for the most part, I'm still satisfied with what I have.


Even when I am actively wanting/hoping to upgrade to something more powerful, I don't buy it until I can afford it. My definition of being able to afford something is having the money budgeted and set aside specifically for that thing. It's not whether I can afford payments buying it on credit. It's not whether I have enough money in the bank (and potentially forgetting about big payment X coming up next month the money was supposed to be used on).


So for me, it comes down to having a need/use for it, then saving up the money for it. And once I'm at that point, I don't have any reservations about buying it.

Buying something you can't afford is a big no-no. Buying something you can afford but don't need (or have a use for) can be an issue, depending on the circumstances. But IMO, if you need or have a use for something, and you can afford it, go for it!

kyrathaba:
Instead of giving in to the temptation to buy the 4.0GHz 32GB-RAM powerhouse, I settled for an incremental improvement: upgraded RAM from 6 to 8 GB, and moved the OS to a 120 GB SSD.

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