[Snakeadelic]

We're also already looking at major electronics replacement costs this year.

My desktop tower (which was a gift) was refurbished when I got it, and that'll be 4 years ago in July. It's still working well, but I doubt when I finally have zero functionality in XP that it'll take well to updating the OS. Apparently desktop tower CPUs are almost extinct in the wild, so I may have to try to find a laptop that will run a terabyte external drive!

My terabyte external drive, where my writings and an archive of over 150,000 digital photos are stored, is like 6 years old now. I need to buy a new one and have the local shop clone over all the info, because my machine probably wouldn't like having 2 huge externals plugged in, considering if I forget and leave the current external hooked up, my tower (which has an 80-gig hard drive) locks up very early in the startup process. This requires a power-strip hard restart, so I try very hard to avoid it. Regardless, my external hard drive is getting quite old. It was $160 when I bought it to replace the $120 one that broke down like a month after I bought that. I'm hoping prices are WAY down.

My sweetie's desktop tower is like 6 or 7 years old and starting to give him trouble. Weirdly, the TEN-YEAR-OLD f*kking printer works just great for him! He bought the computer new and it was more than a month's rent on our apartment. He's also looking to go laptop due to the scarcity online of people selling reliable desktops.

My neighbor's the worst--he's gotta replace a Mac laptop that's older than our acquaintance (I've known him since late 2008 or so) with a warped battery (again) and body case. That will also mean an expensive new OS and security program update. And he HATES everything Microsoft or compatible with a vivid and profanity-riddled passion, so there's no talking him back to a cheap little Dell laptop or some such.

I can't do much for the menfolk, and since I may already be staring down an SSI audit, trying to (illegally--I'm on SSI) save up money would be very poorly timed.