Last year I bought a new motherboard with an eight-core processor when my old one died. Just a couple of day ago I realized that my experience with that set up is exactly the same as the previous one I bought in 2008. The 1TB hard drive I bought in 2009 is only half full. 16GB of RAM runs no better than 4. Two cores humming along at 3000 mHz can handle everything I throw at them. The others sit idle.

It's a huge change from ten years ago when I would anxiously await the day when I could afford a new rig because I was already pushing my three-year old one to its limit. Desktop PC technology has clearly reached the point where its capabilities far exceed the needs of ordinary users.