I'm not sure when I deserted from the desktop computing wars. It was not a deliberate decision. However, I know it was sometime during the period of the great Windows Vista debacle.

For economists and historians, Microsoft's Vista was simply the natural result of the arrogance and hubris of a near monopoly — and a huge waste of effort for some of the most talented computer professionals in the world. For me, it was the end of an era.

When it comes to desktop computing, I'm a lifer.

My first job was with IBM and its room size computers. Some years later, I bought my first desktop computer — a 16K Radio Shack Model I. (The only way it had to store your data was on cassette tapes.) I never got the thing to do much of anything useful, but I was hooked. From that point on, I have “updated” and “replaced” each time Microsoft and its computer hardware acolytes produced the next upgrade.

But as I read the various stories of the “benefits” and problems associated with Vista, I gradually become more repelled by this new version of a tool that was essential to my work day — and my personal life. The poor performance, the escalating hardware demands, the wasted hours that had to be invested to simply extract an acceptable performance from this workaday tool, were a time and money investment I did not want to make.

And as hardware and software have improved, desktop computer capabilities have begun to exceed my computing requirements. While there are certain computer tasks that will always require every bit of computing power that can be afforded, the documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and communications, required by most people are easily met by any modern computer.

Recently, when it became obvious I was going to have to replace my aging laptop, I also began to question if I really needed both my laptop and my desktop. The usual result from this type of analysis is the selection of one of the 17″ desktop-replacement “laptops.” But once you start examining old habits and biases, who knows where it will lead.

In my case it lead to the Samsung NC10. A netbook did not require the desktop space and myriad wires, cables, and drives of my desktop. Neither did it require the lifting, moving, and carrying, of the eight pounds of dead weight of my old laptop.

It's true, I am still using the antique (in computer years) Windows XP operating system. But I can't think of any need that I have that this operating system does not fill.

The natural next step was to move to Open Office and other open source programs. For my web browsing, documents, spreadsheets, and other general uses, the open source programs serve me very well.

I have some software needs for which I either can't or choose not to abandon the better known commercial versions: Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop Elements, MS Publisher, and half a dozen other specialized programs. All of these easily run on Sammy.

My current computing hardware consists of the following:

A blur Samsung NC-10 (on which I only use about 20 GB for programs and current files)
An external 300 GB hard drive for photos, music, backup and archiving files
A portable 60 GB hard drive with backups of my most critical files — which I store away from my office.
An external CDDVD drive — which I only use about once every six weeks
A 9 oz Sony eReader — for ebooks, but also for personal and business documents that I want to read or study, that I transfer from Sammy (in PDF or RTF format)

The use of the external hard drive for the majority of my file storage is also a significant change for me. Why “work around” thousands of files on a desktop, or “carry around” the files on a laptop? “Check out” the files you need, keep the rest in an external hard drive “library.”

The external hard drive not only is separated from the wear and tear of the daily usage of a laptop, it is protected from any catastrophic failure that might occur on the laptop. And if you have moved all your computing to a laptop, do you really want to fly around the country with all your important computer files — subject to accident, theft, and airport security?

As an additional benefit from this downsized computer setup — it's a lot cheaper than my past solutions.

While most of the words above are about my hardware and software changes, I think that my most important change is one of attitude. I have lost my faith that the next new hardware or software “upgrade” will really improve my computing and my work life. And I think an increasing number of computer users are making this same decision — to the detriment of computer and software suppliers.

I know that computers will continue to be a useful part of my life. I even think Microsoft has become concerned enough to fix most of Vista's problems with Windows 7. But I will never again confuse the value of my computer system with the value of the work it produces.

I've resigned my commission.

I blame the used market. At the rate PCs were replaced and thrown away, anybody who wanted a less powerful computer at a cheaper price could always find one a couple of years old for peanuts — or less than peanuts, sometimes they could be fished out of dumpsters.

So, why are people now buying new netbooks instead of fishing old computers out of dumpsters? The form factor is a big part of it, because ultra-portable devices are the rage now, and there is (almost) no previous generation of ultra-portables.

There is something else going on, though. I think the treadmill of trying to justify more and more powerful systems is running out of steam. Moore's Law has finally taken us well beyond the point where many ordinary people can benefit much from a more powerful system, for the kinds of tasks they typically use a computer for. Thus the whole replacement cycle of computers is starting to sputter and stall out.

This phenomenon was bound to mean trouble for the business models of PC makers (and Microsoft), with or without the rise of Netbooks.

I'm not sure when I deserted from the desktop computing wars. It was not a deliberate decision. However, I know it was sometime during the period of the great Windows Vista debacle.

For economists and historians, Microsoft's Vista was simply the natural result of the arrogance and hubris of a near monopoly — and a huge waste of effort for some of the most talented computer professionals in the world. For me, it was the end of an era.

When it comes to desktop computing, I'm a lifer.

My first job was with IBM and its room size computers. Some years later, I bought my first desktop computer — a 16K Radio Shack Model I. (The only way it had to store your data was on cassette tapes.) I never got the thing to do much of anything useful, but I was hooked. From that point on, I have “updated” and “replaced” each time Microsoft and its computer hardware acolytes produced the next upgrade.

But as I read the various stories of the “benefits” and problems associated with Vista, I gradually become more repelled by this new version of a tool that was essential to my work day — and my personal life. The poor performance, the escalating hardware demands, the wasted hours that had to be invested to simply extract an acceptable performance from this workaday tool, were a time and money investment I did not want to make.

And as hardware and software have improved, desktop computer capabilities have begun to exceed my computing requirements. While there are certain computer tasks that will always require every bit of computing power that can be afforded, the documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and communications, required by most people are easily met by any modern computer.

Recently, when it became obvious I was going to have to replace my aging laptop, I also began to question if I really needed both my laptop and my desktop. The usual result from this type of analysis is the selection of one of the 17″ desktop-replacement “laptops.” But once you start examining old habits and biases, who knows where it will lead.

In my case it lead to the Samsung NC10. A netbook did not require the desktop space and myriad wires, cables, and drives of my desktop. Neither did it require the lifting, moving, and carrying, of the eight pounds of dead weight of my old laptop.

It's true, I am still using the antique (in computer years) Windows XP operating system. But I can't think of any need that I have that this operating system does not fill.

The natural next step was to move to Open Office and other open source programs. For my web browsing, documents, spreadsheets, and other general uses, the open source programs serve me very well.

I have some software needs for which I either can't or choose not to abandon the better known commercial versions: Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop Elements, MS Publisher, and half a dozen other specialized programs. All of these easily run on Sammy.

My current computing hardware consists of the following:

A blur Samsung NC-10 (on which I only use about 20 GB for programs and current files)
An external 300 GB hard drive for photos, music, backup and archiving files
A portable 60 GB hard drive with backups of my most critical files — which I store away from my office.
An external CDDVD drive — which I only use about once every six weeks
A 9 oz Sony eReader — for ebooks, but also for personal and business documents that I want to read or study, that I transfer from Sammy (in PDF or RTF format)

The use of the external hard drive for the majority of my file storage is also a significant change for me. Why “work around” thousands of files on a desktop, or “carry around” the files on a laptop? “Check out” the files you need, keep the rest in an external hard drive “library.”

The external hard drive not only is separated from the wear and tear of the daily usage of a laptop, it is protected from any catastrophic failure that might occur on the laptop. And if you have moved all your computing to a laptop, do you really want to fly around the country with all your important computer files — subject to accident, theft, and airport security?

As an additional benefit from this downsized computer setup — it's a lot cheaper than my past solutions.

While most of the words above are about my hardware and software changes, I think that my most important change is one of attitude. I have lost my faith that the next new hardware or software “upgrade” will really improve my computing and my work life. And I think an increasing number of computer users are making this same decision — to the detriment of computer and software suppliers.

I know that computers will continue to be a useful part of my life. I even think Microsoft has become concerned enough to fix most of Vista's problems with Windows 7. But I will never again confuse the value of my computer system with the value of the work it produces.

I've resigned my commission.

I blame the used market. At the rate PCs were replaced and thrown away, anybody who wanted a less powerful computer at a cheaper price could always find one a couple of years old for peanuts — or less than peanuts, sometimes they could be fished out of dumpsters.

So, why are people now buying new netbooks instead of fishing old computers out of dumpsters? The form factor is a big part of it, because ultra-portable devices are the rage now, and there is (almost) no previous generation of ultra-portables.

There is something else going on, though. I think the treadmill of trying to justify more and more powerful systems is running out of steam. Moore's Law has finally taken us well beyond the point where many ordinary people can benefit much from a more powerful system, for the kinds of tasks they typically use a computer for. Thus the whole replacement cycle of computers is starting to sputter and stall out.

This phenomenon was bound to mean trouble for the business models of PC makers (and Microsoft), with or without the rise of Netbooks.