Farewell to Old Ironsides; Welcome to The Juggernaut

Editor's note: This was originally posted on MySpace on 2 February, 2007, at 0122 EST.

The Juggernaut has arrived. And it is really massively overbuilt. That's sort of the idea.

I buy computers the way other people buy cars. I expect them to last for a very long time. All of this planned obsolescence is well and good, I suppose, but I want no part of it. The only way to thwart the onrush of technology, it seems, is to have one's new computers be so hugely massively beefed up that they are still pretty good years later.

Old Ironsides, my old IBM ThinkPad, turned eleven years old recently. It was struggling and dying, unable to keep up anymore. Eleven years is a very long time in service for a computer, and we can none of us deny that Old Ironsides had a hell of a run. But all good things must come to an end, and now it is time to bid Old Ironsides a fond farewell.

The Juggernaut is, quite simply, ridiculously overdone. Right now, you'd be hard pressed to find a better laptop... it's actually more like a portable desktop. In a few years, the Juggernaut will still be pretty darned good. In a few years after that, it will be okay, but definitely outclassed. A few years after that, it will be just barely hanging on. But that's the plan, after all. All good things must come to an end.

But right now... well, it is the Juggernaut. Many will salivate, but all must tremble.

We must not forget that all good things must also have a beginning.