How old are the computers in your office?

In some recent threads, I've noticed people complaining about their office not getting new computers since 2002 or 2001. It got me to thinking -- we haven't since 1998. Our best newsroom computers are Pentium II from about 1998 or 99. We actually have, I kid you not, a 486 that gets used for word processing. One of our main sports computers died several months ago and was replaced with a computer put together by our IT guys built of still-working parts from other crashed computers.

You know what's the worst part, though? Working here, and until seeing people complain about not getting new computers since four years after we last did, I thought that was just par for the course -- like it was something most papers deal with.

 

I don't know the year, but I'm working on an iMac, the same kind of iMac I used at my first (weekly, I might add) paper - in 2002!

 

In April of 1999 I jumped ship from one weekly to help start another weekly — this in a town of 2,800. Since then, the two papers have merged (the other was corporate-owned, and we just so totally kicked its ass) and I have bounced around in and out of journalism. In March of last year I got back to the merged weekly, and I'm typing on the same keyboard while staring at the same monitor that's hooked up to the same CPU that were just out of the box in April, 1999.
And this thing is just such a big piece of shit.

 

We got all-new Apple G4 laptops a year ago last January to replace our old G3 desktops. The old ones were at least 5 1/2 years old but they worked fine for my purposes. Still, I love our new machines. I can work at home and do everything I need to do except drag and drop art. I have to be on the office LAN to do that.

 

Corporate has finally given us new Macs to replace the G3's we've been on since about 1993, but they haven't been installed yet.

 

Old enough that I just had to upgrade them, and it's a pain in the ass.

 

We just got new computers a few months ago, but they replaced PCs that were six or seven years old. They were bad -- even loading ESPN.com was an adventure.

 

That's a bad thing?

 

Just an example. No judgment implied.

 

Fixed.

 

So old my browser does not support the website of the league which happens to be our primary beat, bread and butter. I have to get stats, etc. from home either before or after work.

Also, so old I can no longer log into hotmail.

 

Using a computer that is five years old is like using something that is 20 years old...The life of a computer is not good. Macs are awesome though they seem to have a lot less problems than PC's.


Rokski....this is off topic but...Kobe's position is SHOOTING guard. The rest of his team has choked and he has no help.