Finances

[TigerHunter]

My PC officially no longer functions as a gaming rig. To remedy this, I plan to dual-boot my MacBook with Windows XP, since it has 4 gigs of RAM, a video card that supports pixel shader, and far better performance all around.

However, the $300 for an XP license, plus $70 for an external drive to store everything on, and the games I'll be purchasing for it, will effectively blow through half the money I have saved.

Given that I'm going to college next year and have no source of income at the moment (I had to quit my summer job when school re-started), I'm worried about what my financial state while entering college will be.

So basically, should I save my money for other things later, or is it OK to spend it now? And should I try and find a new job for the rest of Senior year?

[reorith]

i'd say be content with the stuff you have and save your current savings for things you need. if you get a new job, keep saving and then reexamine this issue in six months.

or just pirate xp and look for a good deal on an external hard drive.

[valadil]

Why do you need an external drive? Macbooks have pretty beefy hard drives (they start at 120gb for a Macbook and 200gb for the pro). Also, buying a pre-built external drive is always way more expensive than getting a drive enclosure and a hard drive. They only take about 5 min to assemble.

Could you use your existing copy of XP? I'm not about to advocate piracy, but if you have XP on your current computer why not just put it on the new one instead?

[Ilena]

Depends if it was a company computer like hp or dell, if it is then he most likely wont have the accual copy of xp, thus no way to transfer it without alot of hassle, personally i would save the money, ive been needing to upgrade my computer for 6 months or so to a far better machine, but ive not been able to due to car and horse bills that need to be done :( (just spend about 550 dollers on horses + car earlier this week :() so if you are going to collage then save the money id say,

[Krrth]

If you know what college you are planning to go to, check with them. They will sometimes have "student editions" of software avaiable for free (well, as part of your tuition anyways). That's how I was able to get Server 2000, Server 2000 pro and Win XP.

[TigerHunter]

Could you use your existing copy of XP? I'm not about to advocate piracy, but if you have XP on your current computer why not just put it on the new one instead?
All I have are reinstallation discs which are specific to my Dell PC.

[Crispy Dave]

wait your paying $300 for the OS it should only be 140 check newegg (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116515)