First, I'm a pack-rat; I worry about deleting something valuable. Specifically, I worry about orphaned files because the application software is no longer supported or the media is obsolete.
For example, my resume is a Hypercard stack. Really. Hypercard is an OS 9 application, and future OS X's won't support it anymore. However, I have an old disk drive with an OS9 and Hypercard. Consequently, I can't consider erasing that disk drive.
For years, I've had a TODO list item for designing a resume DTD, unwinding the Hypercard stack into that DTD, and ditching Hypercard entirely. I'd have to maintain my resume as a massive XML database, but that's not all bad.
This also means that I have old computers laying around. The current home network shows an embarrassing surplus of home computers.
Here's one plan:
- Ditch the old slot-loading iMac. It has a 10Gb drive, is G3 PPC, and S L O W. It's land-fill material unless someone offers me $50 for it.
- Move the current desk-lamp iMac out to pasture as the fall-back machine. It's G4, so it isn't as slow. And it's PPC, so it runs Hypercard until I get my act together to extract my resume from Hypercard.
- Start making more use of the MacBook that I had to buy as part of the $1,503.65 replacement for a MacBook one of my kids spilled coffee into.
However, I give up the big keyboard and big display. Tough choice.