Guess who got their IRS refund check? I’m still very much adjusting or trying to adjust to working from a “retired” budget mindset versus my previous “we can cover this with my next paycheck” mindset.1 Part of me thinks that I have perfectly good tech and should put the refund check into savings to earn a bit of interest and increase my financial backup. But… (cue the “rationalization” music) I’m currently without a portable computing solution (except my 2020 iPad Pro) and if I were to do further roadtrips, a MacBook would be a good thing to have… AND I can trade-in my aging 2020 Intel iMac. Yeah, I know, first-world issues. This is going to go a bit deep.

What do I do? I mean, this might be my last income tax refund check (of any size)! I used to joke that when I got divorced in the late 1980s, when it came to technology purchases, it was like what the Beatles went through when Brian Epstein died, in that there was no one around to say, “No.” That’s a dysfunctional way to think about this. So, how do I normally make these kinds of decisions? 

Some time ago I did a bit of research and put together a spreadsheet of all of my tech purchases going back to 1984.2 I seem to go through cycles, usually waiting two-years between purchases.3 Last big purchase was last Fall when I bought a new desktop computer, an M2 Mac Studio. My justification was that I had gotten a nice estate check and I was able to trade in my 2019 16” MacBook Pro for over $700. I felt like I needed to upgrade my systems to Apple’s new M-chips and I was already two generations behind and the MacBook got me the most trade-in payback. Before that, the last big purchase was in the Fall of 2020, when I bought my 27” iMac. We were fully into teaching from home and I wanted a big-screen iMac, making it so that I was working with three 27” monitors on my desktop. Overkill for some, but I was loving it.  Who could have guessed that they’d force us to return to campus the following March. Ack. So much for working with three giant screens.4 That’s when it was essential that I had a laptop to work with on campus and my home desktop. And that setup served me well my last three years on campus. I guess I wasn’t anticipating too much travel when I traded in my MacBook and bought a second desktop. 

Thinking about the justification for this current purchase (which completely throws away the two- or more years gap) I already mentioned the IRS refund. And also, when I went to Hawaii for 19-days last Christmas I was able to kind’a make-do using just my iPad Pro, but I did run into issues with video editing and the file management stuff that I want to do. So, if I’m going to do a tech upgrade it only makes sense that it’s another MacBook. Question is do I go for another (more expensive) MacBook Pro or do I lean into the whole portable thing with a MacBook Air (especially now that they’ve updated to an M3 chip). Future-proofing the purchase to get the most years would normally dictate that I go for the more expensive Pro model. But do I really need that extra horsepower? As it is, I’m upping the RAM to 16MB and storage to a 2TB SSD, which really jacks the price up, but I like having that much storage and know that the base model 8MG RAM is too little. So, that’s pretty much settled.

2024 M3 MacBook Air
2024 M3 MacBook Air

Next question is whether I trade-in my 27” iMac. I didn’t trade-in the iMac when I bought Mac Studio in the Fall because I knew I’d get a much better price trading in the 16” MacBook Pro. Trading in the iMac now will lower the price of the new MacBook Air by over $400. I have a lot of nostalgia for the big screen iMac because I really do love the form-factor and design of the machine. And my current iMac isn’t my first all-in-one iMac. 

2009-10-24 iMac unboxing-01
2009-10-24 iMac unboxing-02

2009 iMac Unbox

I bought my first all-in-one iMac in 2009, which was a similar design to the current one, except that the current one is much thinner and more powerful. Interestingly, I traded in that iMac one year later when I bought my first MacBook Air in 2010. So, I’m hesitating a little, just in case this is history needlessly repeating itself. It doesn’t help that I’ve been watching all of these retro YouTubers who are resurrecting old computers5 and it makes me wonder if I shouldn’t have kept some of my old computers, like my old 1980s Kaypro computers, which are the computers that got me started in this whole technology adventure to begin with. But then, what would I do with them?

Before moving to Florida in 2008, I routinely ran at least one Windows machine and an Apple machine at the same time. At first, with the Windows PCs, I was upgrading components and not buying complete systems, so the “collection” of parts naturally grew. It was harder to upgrade components on laptops so those usually were given to or sold to relatives and friends. It was amazing how much tech I could stuff into my small one-room Long Beach apartment. 

2006-08-10 Blue PC Mac Speakers under desk
2006-08-10 Blue PC Mac Speakers under desk

Add to that, sometimes, like over the holidays, I would bring home a computer from school, like an older Bondi Blue iMac, to experiment and tinker with. Alas, usually the poor thing(s) would sit there on a table and only get booted up once or twice before being taken back to school. Regardless of what I thought it was going to do, there was very little that I couldn’t do on my personal devices that I needed the third (or fourth) device to do. It kind’a reminds me of when I experimented with Linux. It was cool and challenging, but once I had it up and running what else was I going to do with it that I wasn’t already doing on my PCs or Macs?  So, knowing that Full Sail University was an Apple/Mac environment, I decided to cull the herd. I gave away all of my PCs, sent my Macintosh G4 tower to a friend and took my Mac Mini and 15” MacBook Pro with me to Florida to begin this new chapter of my life. I wonder if I shouldn’t have kept at least one of the PCs, like as backup or something.6 There was a funny moment when I was unpacking my stuff in Florida and found the small door panel to my blue translucent PC tower case, but I had given away the case itself. I think around this time I’d also found a good vendor who would buy my old tech, like the 2009 27” iMac, for a good price, which gave me a little more justification to make the purchase of whatever new tech I was considering, and not generate another collection of old or unused computers like I had in Long Beach. 

2008-08-03 What's Left of Blue Lucite PC Case - 1
2008-08-03 What’s Left of Blue Lucite PC Case – 1

But it wasn’t a perfect system. Like any techie, I have boxes of cables and power cords and hubs that may or may not go with devices that I’ve long ago gotten rid of. And, despite my efforts to recycle or sell my old tech, I do have a couple of shelve that house older tech that didn’t get recycled or disposed of. It’s my unintentional collection of tech memories.7 This Retired Tech Collection doesn’t quite go back to my first computers, but my Tandy WP-2 Wordprocessor goes back to around 1989 and I have my first iPod from 2002 and original 2007 iPhone. And you know what? I have not turned on any of these ten devices since they were put on display. The display makes for nice memories, but what other purpose could they actually serve?  

2024 Retired Tech Collection-1
2024 Retired Tech Collection-2

2024 Retired Tech Collection

I guess having the physical device is nice. But the reality is there’s a reason I moved on from these devices. For example, my 1989 Tandy WP-2 was very cool in it’s time, having a small portable “computer” that I could use anywhere when I wanted to write. But it was hard to get the text exported from the device and real notebook computers made working on a device with a four-line screen seemed silly. And now, because of some battery corrosion I can’t even turn the device on. There’s a reason I moved on from these devices. Wouldn’t having nice images and a couple videos from when the devices were in its prime and fully employed serve the same purpose?

Again, having my old Kaypro would be nice, but after 40-years would it even boot-up? When I sold them in the 1990s, I think the CRT monitor on one was beginning to fail and I knew that it was only a matter of time before the second one would also failed. I tried to make sure I had backup copies of everything I’d written when I moved from Kaypro CP/M to my PCs, but over the years I’ve wondered if there was anything that didn’t quite make the transition. Having been Mac only since 2008, I also wonder if some things got lost in the transition from Windows to Mac OS too, given that I was working in apps that don’t exist anymore. Trying to recover data in old formats would be the only real reason for still keep these old devices. But after some research I’ve discovered that there are software work-arounds that might help resurrect data stored in old formats. Besides, that’s not really the problem I’m weighing when thinking about trading in my current Intel iMac. Is my possible future nostalgia worth over $400? 

I wish I could afford to keep my 2020 27” iMac and add it to the small collection of retired devices. But I’m trying to be more intentional with my tech purchases and actually do some declutterring in the process. Unlike the guys in the retro-tech YouTube channels, I don’t have or want to have storage rooms filled with old computers and devices. I am trying to get rid of stuff that I don’t use and digitize everything that I want to remember. Besides, my growing LEGO collection is getting seriously out of hand and I scarcely know where I’m going to display that stuff, much less a bunch of old computers. 

When this video popped up in my feeds I realized that if I get nostalgic down the road I might be able to just 3D print up a replica to satisfy that need. Enjoy.

Sources:

Tags: buying new tech, more intentional tech, old tech, personal tech history, upgrading personal tech

Creative Commons License

JoeBustillos.com (website) by Joseph Bruce Bustillos is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

  1. Yeah, I know, talk about being financially irresponsible… sadly I was raised with a paycheck-to-paycheck mindset and never really changed. I just adjusted when my income decreased, like when I went from being a 15-year veteran with the phone company to my first year teaching and then again when I went from teaching 13-years in California to my Full Sail University job and then Full Sail Labs job…  each time the scale went down a bit, until it slowly climbed back up. At the same time I never anticipated not working, so there was always an expectation that I’d cover things with the next paycheck. And it seemed audacious to me to make assumptions about future income that would enable things like saving for the future or making investments. There are some deep seated problems here. Ack.[↩]
  2. I know, very nerdy, but last Fall, when I was thinking about my next tech purchase, I thought that it might be helpful to track any purchases that I still have records on. There are more than a few gaps, like when I apparently bought a couple Gateway PCs that I don’t seem to have receipts for, and I know that I bought a Zenith  notebook that also seems to be missing receipts. Anyway, it’s surprising how frequently I find myself going to the spreadsheet when I’m writing these posts.[↩]
  3. The longest gap between computer purchases was when I bought my 15” MacBook Pro in 2012 and didn’t buy another computer until buying a 13” MacBook Pro in 2017. There were a couple iPad and iPhone upgrades during the five year gap, but no desktop/laptop upgrades.[↩]
  4. Undeterred I made my 16” MacBook Pro my main machine on campus, found a way to attached two external monitors to my classroom setup and had a second (school issued) computer run the classroom projector, which also showed the students who were still working remotely.[↩]
  5. Video Fridays: Retro-Tech YouTube Channels by Joe Bustillos (2024-03-22), https://joebustillos.com/2024/03/video-fridays-retro-tech-youtube-channels/[↩]
  6. I had a very cool blue translucent PC tower case that I really should have kept… sad.[↩]
  7. While doing some research for this post, and trying to track images of my old tech, I realized how few images I actually had. Then when I was listing the devices in my Retired Tech Collection I thought that a more complete visual record should be created, that could serve as my Old Tech Collection. Okay, I’ve just given myself another tech story to do…[↩]