It’s similar to the way a dog circles around a spot for a while before finally lying down on it.
When I’m getting ready to make a substantial purchase, I start going online and pricing it over and over, trying various configurations, perhaps even going so far as to click on “Add to Cart”, before then going to “View Cart” and clicking on the “Remove” button.
It’s a sign I’m about to commit.
So today I committed; it was time to upgrade the main home computer, a fine dual 2.7 G5 Power Macintosh. Great faithful computer, trouble-free. But there are these really fantastic 8-core Mac Pros out there, and…
Mac Pro: dual quad-core Intel Xeons, 2.8 gHz, thus 8 cores in all. Terabyte hard drive. I got it with the standard memory configuration (Apple’s prices for memory are outrageous) and bought more from OWC, so it will have 10 GB of memory altogether. Research seems to indicate that the stock ATI 2600 video card is actually better for most of the stuff I do than the nVidia 8800, so I got the ATI. If I don’t like it, I can always get the nVidia extra — or pop for some outrageously expensive card. Dual CD/DVD drives, wireless, all that good stuff.
It should arrive in about a week, and will take me a few days to get fully set up properly as I like.
Getting older has some distinct disadvantages — one simply isn’t as attractive as one once was. On the other hand, if one is reasonably successful as a breadwinner, one has much more spending power. Or at least credit worthiness.