Principia Mathematica Corporatica

I know Intel has had trouble with math in the past, but this might be a more grievous error.

A huge thank-you to WARvault, for sending that along as a special order. Apparently, to Intel’s marketing department, one calendar year is about 32 1/3 years to a computer. Which means my Pentium is a whopping 452 years, 8 months old. Who knew.

Gee, maybe I should run out and buy a new one. 🙄

I can only hope nobody falls for that nonsense. To remain strictly educational, this is what I mean when I talk about advertising pressure and marketing gibberish pushing you to buy a new computer.

You don’t need to buy a new computer. Microsoft needs you to buy a new computer. Intel needs you to buy a new computer. These are multibillion-dollar corporations that don’t make money if you don’t spend.

And if they don’t make money, they fail. As simple as that. So they will push you and plead and instill any sense of fear or guilt they can invoke, if it means they’ll continue to make gobs and gobs of money.

They don’t care about you. They care about money. And the easiest way to make money in this day and age is to release shoddy products and convince people they need to buy them.

If I came up to you on the street and shrieked in a panicked voice, “You need to buy a new computer!” you’d think I was imbalanced. You’d probably phone the cops or the guys in the white suits, and spend the rest of the day wondering what was wrong with me.

But for some reason, corporations have some twisted shred of authority when they splash posters like this around town, and the same shriek from them sinks deeper into your skull. No one even questions it.

Well, I’m not falling for it. I hope you don’t either. Learn to use yours more efficiently and completely and you can go for four, six, eight or maybe even 10 years without having to buy a new one. That’s 323 years to a computer, you know. 😀

9 thoughts on “Principia Mathematica Corporatica

  1. lo0m

    oh no! my 486 is over 500 years and I didn’t say Happy Birthday even once.. oh boy, she’ll definitely break up with me.. 😉

    Reply
  2. Theo

    @loOm, it even can be worse. 😉
    *look at his old 8 bit stuff (atari, commodore and msx computers)*

    Reply
  3. Foz

    I apologise in advance:

    When 500 years old you reach, work as well you will not, hmmm?

    *cackle*

    Reply
  4. mulenmar

    Ooh, you’re right Intel. I *should* buy a new computer. But it’ll be a Lemote Yeeloong, which has a Loongson MIPS-architecture processor that, like everything else in it, is NOT made by you! :mrgreen:

    Trivia: I misspelled every single word of the name of that laptop and its processor before looking it up. 😛

    Reply
  5. Conkeh

    I like this blog very much and would agree with a large portion of the stuff being said here.

    However, things are not always as simple as this post suggests – unfortunately. For instance, I’m about to buy a new Toshiba that will give me hell to configure my Linux on, and toss a perfectly good and compatible 97-year-old FSC aside. Why? Well I work 10-12 hours a day on my notebook that goes to the office and everywhere else, and I have very tired eyes and fingers. The Toshiba has much better keyboard ergonomics and much better quality monitor. I don’t have to buy MS products preinstalled if I don’t want to, and the price goes down if I don’t.

    So why wouldn’t I buy the new shiny thing? 🙂

    Reply
    1. prinzzchavo

      …but then again, yours seems to be a decision taken with functionality in mind.

      On that behalf, it fits quite well with what is being said on this blog

      Reply
    2. LazyO>

      Your argument for buying a new computer (Toshiba has much better keyboard ergonomics and much better quality monitor; thus, my eyes and fingers will not be as tired after using it versus my current notebook.), while perfectly sound, has absolutely nothing to do with this post (Computer years progress rapidly, so even if a computer is only a few years old it will not be able to work in today’s world.). Why bother posting an off-topic rebuttal that completely ignores the whole point of this post?

      Reply
  6. ajlec2000

    I get my computers from people who take Intel to heart and thus have an old computer to get rid of. I usually get them very cheap, even free at times. Wish people had that attitude about cars. I’d be driving a 2004 Caddy.

    Reply

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