Well, Janie, who's a non-techie person? My wife would say that anyone capable of reading e-mail without assistance, is a "techie."
I guess I'm a techie - but then, so are you. I suppose, though, that people would call me a techie. But a real techie is somebody like my geeky stepson, or maybe John in Kansas.

Still, I have an opinion, even if I am a techie. It seems to me that computers get intolerably sluggish after about three years, so I figure on buying a new computer every 3-4 years. I seem to get away with waiting five years at the women's center where I do volunteer work work, maybe because they only things they use are Microsoft Office and Internet browsers and antivirus software. I just replaced a bunch of Windows XP computers with Windows 7, spending about $350 apiece for the new computers. I get a better-quality computer for myself because I store my music collection on my computers, and I do photo and sound editing.

So, after I've used a computer three or four years, I hand it down to my stepson and he's pleased as punch. He puts Linux on them and gangs them together and does other geeky stuff with them. I often refurbish the old work computers and give them to our clients, but we decided this last batch was beyond refurbishing and we turned them in for recycling. We get a lot of old computers donated, mostly by businesses, and many of them aren't worth refurbishing. I got one from a bakery that was full of flour and sticky with frosting - it had been used with cake decorating software. I refuse to take anything by LCD monitors any more, and I've told the boss that I don't think I want to take XP computers any more because it's getting hard to find people to give them to.

-Joe-