Years ago when I purchased an Acer Predator gaming laptop for nearly 1500 dollars I thought I was going to be on cloud nine for many years to come. To be fair it really did a good job for many years but here we are 7 years later and man oh man is that thing outdated.
I didn't really have any idea that this would end up being the case because I never really used any other computers other than my own and if I did, it was just to do something simple like get on the net for a few minutes to find out the address of a local business.
Ignorance truly was bliss and my motivation for getting another computer was actually based on the fact that my Acer Predator was too bulky and heavy to be considered a travel computer so I called up a local guy that deals with the expat community here in Da Nang to see what he had available for under $500. I ended up just buying whatever he turned up with and the total cost was a mere $300.
The reason why I purchased a $1500 computer in the first place is because at the time I was really into PC gaming and even though I had a gaming desktop rig at my house, I was starting a new phase in my life and decided that I wanted my entire life to fit into two suitcases. This obviously negated the possibility of having a massive desktop and the one that I previously had was so huge. It had 6 fans and was a cube shaped monstrosity. I called it the "Cube of Power" and it was a sight to behold in its heyday. The latest and greatest games (at the time) ran on full spec at a wonderful pace and the loadup times were very small - again, for the time.
I offloaded that beast and got a Predator because I still wanted to game, but I couldn't possibly have something that monstrous if I was going to stick to my 2-suitcase lifestyle that I still stick to, to this day.
However, time catches up with all of us and what was considered one of the best gaming laptops in 2016 ended up being a real slog-fest by the time 2023 rolled around. However, since I never used any other computers, I was blissfully unaware of how far along technology had come. I figured when I bought this $300 computer that it was going to be a piece of crap that I only used while traveling (which I don't do much of these days) only to discover that this Dell low-end something or other is actually much faster in every way than my Predator is.
I'll be honest and say that I am out of the loop and don't really know what a lot of that actually means. I have to presume that it is a much better CPU that didn't exist when I bought my Acer Predator because there isn't much other explanation for why the Dell would be faster even though it is really lightweight, small, only had 8GB of RAM and doesn't have a GPU at all.
I suppose you could say that I am very happy about my recent vacation because of the fact that had I not decided to get this new "travel laptop" I would still be sitting at my desk looking at things that are no longer responding and getting the ol' CTRL ALT DELETE involved on a regular basis.
For now at least, I am perfectly happy with a $300 Dell because honestly, my mind is just blown that a computer this cheap can be so much better than something I paid 5x as much for 7 years ago.
Now I have to re-evaluate my mindset because when I bought the $1500 machine I did so thinking that it would stay "good" for a very long time. I suppose I will have to wait a year or two to see if that ends up being the case because if this thing that I am typing on now still functions well in say, 2 years time, then getting a super-laptop will kind of be financially wasteful.
Now I don't really know what to do with the Predator. I don't like throwing things like that out but I may just wipe it and put some sort of Linux distro on it and play around with that. If you have any distros that you would like to suggest it would be appreciated.
For now, it is just sitting in the corner doing nothing.
