I'm still using my Lenovo X220 tablet PC from 2011. Actually, technically, I'm using W-'s, since he got the same model and he's not using his I was thinking about whether I want to upgrade my laptop. It looks like GNU Parallel will let me do my video encoding across multiple nodes, so I don't necessarily need to upgrade just to be able to handle the once-a-year ffmpeg encoding of all the EmacsConf videos. Recording videos and live streaming is mostly bottlenecked by me not wanting to talk much at the end of the day, but I can experiment with that even with my current setup. Plugging in modern external monitors, well, there's a VGA monitor downstairs that I haven't been using. So I'm going to try that first. Better resolution would be nice, but we're going to start with the external monitor, I think. If I find myself actually be able to do more focused work, then it might make sense to get something that can do 1920x.

So yeah, I think I can put off an upgrade for another year. I did also look into the possibilities of just upgrading the RAM on my laptop, since 16GB will run me maybe ~$200. Not bad. I should find out how often I actually swap. And if I ever run out of space as well (sometimes I need to reshuffle how my my files are organized), apparently, they have 4TB SSDs these days. Still, it's not a big deal.

I think I'm just gonna keep waiting. I'll try using an external monitor at night, so maybe I'll leave my laptop down and just patch it into that VGA monitor once in a while. I'm going to try to do more thinking, planning, and writing.

I'll check out this again once the kiddo settles into in-person school, whenever that will be. Then maybe I'll have more focused time to do some programming and other cool stuff.