Personal Computer" Why haven't the email bobmers been shut down by no 1315

Like you, I see no "nostalgia value" in Wintel-clone x86 kit. I have one "old" (1999-vintage P3-500) PC doing pretty good service as my home LAN's general mail-news-ssh-squid-DNS-print-file server (this is being typed in an ssh window onto it from work...) and one recent one that's my Train Sim and MS Office box.

And the *only* reason the PC has been kept on as a server is that it's a surplus machine and it's been by far the cheapest way to provide those services and 360 gig of disc space to the rest of my network. If it'd been cheaper to do it with a castoff "real" Unix box, that's how it would've been done!

The rest of my LAN is "interesting" kit - mostly Sun-clone (Tadpole and DTK), SGI (multiple) and Apple at the moment, although it's also included NeXT and HP-Apollo in the past.

I'd sooner use my Indigo2 Impact as a workstation than some manky old PC.

I can understand why people drive around in clbuttic cars. I can't understand why, economics apart, they voluntarily drive round in dangerous old wrecks. ;)

pete --