Not Another "Just in Time for..." (Patreon)

I won't call this "Just in Time for Christmas - Part 4" because this isn't quite another 'oh woe is me' post.  Just a little information in case some of you see a short term slow down in the number of posts and/or the quality of pictures from me.

Recently...well, before Thanksgiving...I noticed that my computer was getting slower and slower.  Cleaning all of the junk off of it and general housekeeping use to be a regular bi-weekly task, but it was getting to point where I was having to do it every two or three days.  I finally came to the realization that...hey, genius, you're nursing along a six year old desktop that's running six year old software (that hasn't been supported for three years).

Now, I say this won't be a "just in time for..." because I completely forgot that I have an unused (and, more importantly, zero balance) Dell account.  So, in this instance, my recent economic woes are not really a factor.  Well, no factor until the bill arrives several months from now, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Just before Christmas I ordered a new desktop.  Nothing fancy, nothing pricey, and just enough to get the job done...and received it two days ago.  Generally speaking, Dell's only get expensive when you start adding stuff onto them (on their website).  First observations were that it seriously needs to have a ram upgrade....the pitiful 4gb it came with just won't keep up with modern vector-based graphics editors.  I'll be upgrading that on Tuesday thanks to (the far cheaper) Amazon. 

Originally I was going to load my old CorelDraw X7 onto the new machine, but...again, hey genius...most modern machines don't come with DVD drives.  Instead, I opted to get the most recent version of the 'home version' of CorelDraw 2019.  It's roughly the same as the full 'professional' version, but without the entire suite of programs (75% of which I don't use anyway) and at less than one fifth of the price.  

I did contemplate making a switch to Abobe Photoshop, which has more features, but I just couldn't bring myself to paying a monthly or yearly software subscription.  I generally keep and use software for years and years beyond the point when most (normal) people have deleted them, so an annual bill of nearly $200 (versus a on-time $90 and thank you again Amazon) just doesn't seem like very good economic sense for me.  To put that another way, I used X4 and X7 for five years respectively....that would be $2000 in annual subscriptions if used Adobe.  Thanks, but no thanks.

Now, with all of that said, I'm still trying to get use to this new software.  It's still the old familiar programs (yet another reason why I didn't switch to Photoshop), but A LOT of it's features have changed...and, in my opinion, not all for the better.  So, like I said before, if you see a (hopefully, short-lived) slump in productivity...now you know why.