I’ve always been enamored with devices. I remember watching in awe as my 7th grade friends walked down the school hallway listening to cassettes on their Walkman and magic headphones, or playing their handheld electronic Mattel Football game (Ooohhh, I loved those). I remember seeing ads for the BoneFone, an FM radio that wrapped around your neck and vibrated your collarbone. I had to have one, and I saved my allowance for months to buy one. I walked into my local electronics store with my dollars and coins in my hand with excitement and tangible anticipation, and I enjoyed that radio for years.

My wife and I bought our first desktop computer in the early 1990’s. A Mac LC II, informally known as the “pizza box” because the CPU was wide and flat. I installed Photoshop on that computer from 10 floppy disks, and I remember playing with fonts, colors and an awesome new game called Tetris. I could sit and play that thing for hours.

I still take joy with every new device I buy, every new package I open. Rather than buying games and wearable FM technology, I am now buying iPhones, Apple Watches and the occasional Sonos speaker. We bought our last computer in the spring of 2013, and though it still looks brand new and innovative, it has become impossibly slow and temperamental with the inevitable passage of time.

So, now we are left to wonder. Do we really need to even buy a new computer at all? My family knows me well, and how much I savor opening every new Apple device I can create an excuse to buy. I can’t help to wonder though, why exactly am I buying a new computer inn 2019?

My music, photos and documents are all stored in the cloud, easily accessible by my iPhone and iPad. We do our banking in the cloud, email, social networking and more. Relatively inexpensive though desktop computers may be these days, I cannot help but to wonder what may happen if I were not to replace my aging iMac.

So, I leave these questions for you, my intelligent and intrepid readers, how do we effectively transition to a post-desktop computer age? There must be things I am doing and storing only on my computer that I can’t do or store elsewhere, but I am not sure.

Are you still using a computer? If you have made the switch from a desktop to other type of device, what unexpected problems did you have? Did you ultimately save the money you hoped to save?

Left to my own devices, I am sure I will do it wrong. Thank you in advance for your help.