That Lagging Fear: Is It Time to Shop Around?

Given a computer’s complexity, durability and cost, common sense suggests that you should keep it a long time. Still, as your Mac ages, do you feel a nagging fear of being left behind? It’s not merely fear. The speed of technological change has taken planned obsolescence to a new level.

But take heart. No one in his or her right mind would want to endure the inconvenience of buying the latest and greatest every four months to get a little more kick or a few new features. The trick is to know whether to buy a new machine, upgrade an old one or sit still. To make that decision confidently, take this short test:

Question 1: Do you really need a new machine?

Most of us experience periodic techno-lust, whether or not we have a clue what we’d do with a new computer. If money is no object, lust is ample reason to jump. (All three of you can stop reading now and proceed to the showroom.)

As for everyone else, first consider what you must accomplish every day with a computer and what you want to accomplish. If you just write memos and push numbers around in simple spreadsheets and don’t have more grandiose plans (don’t be ashamed; there are millions like you), sit still. Almost any Mac you’ve got is probably fine. Take the money you just saved and go to Bermuda this winter.

But do you find yourself running out of memory every time you open more than two applications at once? Are you constantly archiving old files to make room for new ones? Read on.

Question 2: Will new components solve your problems?

When the Mac was born, hard drives and memory chips were expensive. Programmers wrote simple, economical, elegant software to fit the modest hardware of early Macs. Somewhat paradoxically, modern programmers abandoned such finesse and now create increasingly complex and bloated programs that require vast disk and memory resources.

Fortunately, memory and disk drives have never been cheaper; fast 1-gigabyte drives now cost less than $250, and for many Macs, you can get 4 megabytes of RAM for an astonishing $30. So if your computer is fast enough to manage the work you do, but you find yourself with no place to store your proliferating creations and need to open more applications simultaneously, here’s a cheap fix.

But do your spreadsheets recalculate with painful sluggishness? Are you about to jump into designing four-color brochures or manipulating digitized photographs? Or do you have a child older than 5? If so, move to the next step.

Question 3: Should you upgrade or buy a new Mac?

Your Mac Plus, SE or Classic, a venerable VW Beetle of computing, has served you well and loyally. But don’t even think about upgrading that old workhorse; put it out to pasture.

If you’ve got a more recent vintage, pre-PowerPC Mac (such as a Quadra-series machine), DayStar Digital and Apple offer PowerPC upgrade cards starting at about $650 for many Macs.

While better than what you started with, such upgrades are still slower than a true Power Mac. And your upgrade will never run Mac OS 8, when it finally arrives sometime next year.

Apple offers a few system-board upgrades that avoid some of those pitfalls, including some tempting PowerBook options. But most new Macs are so inexpensive that, when you factor in the resale value of your old machine (and the hassle of upgrading), the chance of an upgrade making economic sense usually looks small.

So if you’ve outgrown your old Mac, you’ll almost certainly want to buy a new one. And with Apple, Umax, Power Computing and DayStar all shipping Macs, there has never been a better time to buy.

Don’t let the vendors’ hype engender a false sense of urgency. Buy when you’re ready. There will always be a better, cheaper computer just around the corner.

Charles Piller, senior editor at Macworld magazine, can be reached via e-mail at cpiller@macworld.com