I already do.  I use a desktop computer which is a retired, six-year-old server;  my notebook is five years old.  Both work very well running software which I had a hand in writing – GNU/Linux.

I also keep 2K and XP around to run remote service applications in my work with alarm and access control systems.

Heck, most of Apple’s OS/X is lifted from tthe GNU project;  there’s part of me in there.  A bit of Windows is lifted from BSD, and I’m in there as well.

My portable MP3 player I built in ’97 – before iPods – and it works just fine; 30GB is enough for me.  For those who aren’t engineers, there are still options.

My ‘phone is an older Samsung Moment.  Again, it just works.

While I do own a Mac, it’s a Quadra 840AV which I keep around because it runs PhotoShop VERY well.

I’ve several aouomobiles, an ’00 Ford mini-van and two utility vehicles made when there was still a wall down the middle of Main Street Germany.  They all WORK, and well.

I also don’t buy pre-ripped Jeans, being instead happy to damage ‘em myself in the course of my day to day activities in basements, attics and atop ladders.

Noone “needs” the latest-greatest-newest except maybe some poor schlub whose work or school requires something which will crawl only on Windoze 7 – not all that common.

While I do love the style of Apple products, and know the software intimately as I “tech for food,” I’m contented to love it from a distance.

I’m also contented to produce rather than obsessively consume, and to stay clear of any unnecessary “upgrades” to whatever code-bloated, shorter-lived dingus currently hogs the limelight.

Russ Bixby, geek of the plains