Every time I write an article about how I don’t need a new computer because my old one works just fine, you know what’s going to happen next. 🙂

I basically concluded that I’m spending too much mental energy arguing with myself that I don’t need to spend money on new computers despite the fact that most of my gear is 4-5 years old and old computers are neither fast nor reliable, and for someone like myself who does basically everything with computers, it’s not the best idea to keep the old stuff for too long, because it increases the probability of random failure, so preventative maintenance in form of replacing the workhorse machines every 5 years at max is simply a reasonable thing to do.

So, I got both a new laptop and a desktop upgrade kit; I upgraded the desktop to Ryzen 5900X with 64GB of RAM, and I got a new M1 Macbook Air. The desktop thing is obvious – I basically replaced the motherboard, which was actually producing issues with sound going mute for a second every now and then, which must be a USB issue since my sound works through s Schiit Modi 3 DAC connected via USB, and not the built-in audio. The issue went away with motherboard change. I also got rid of the DDR3 RAM, which was running at 1600MHz, and I got a high end CPU. Basically, in most things I do it conformed to my predictions – it’s no faster in normal desktop use than my old system, but Lightroom runs significantly faster, and I actually use 44GB of RAM under serious load, so 64GB is not overkill.

As for the laptop, the 15” Mac was not the best match for my usage case (too big and awkwardly shaped for writing books/articles in my lap), so I bought an Asus Zenbook ultralight a couple of years ago, because the new Air had shit keyboard and shit CPU, and it cost significantly more, but the screen and battery on the Zenbook were sub-par, and I prefer Mac OS on the laptop, so I got the new Apple Silicon Air now, which is fast, has great keyboard, touchpad and screen, and the battery life is better than anything I could imagine existing on a laptop. I managed to compile the GNU tools I needed in Macports, and unless I need a dedicated portable Lightroom machine later on, I’m done with hardware now and I can go back to blissfully ignoring it into the foreseeable future. Basically, I replaced both my old laptops with a single new one, except for Lightroom on a vacation, where the 15” Macbook pro will continue to be used, due to bigger screen and more RAM, which make it a superior photo editing machine. The new Air has sufficient resources for everything other than Lightroom, which is a specialized task that requires so much more resources it just makes no sense to try and cram it all into an ultraportable, especially since the screen size is one of the main limitations, and for everything else that I do the Air is as fast as the new Ryzen desktop.