No, you don’t need all the bells and whistles that the latest model has to offer!
Here’s where I work on my site and my newsletter:
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/images/csrl.jpg
Nothing fancy, nothing cutting-edge. The machine in the photo is a Dell 933MHz that I bought back in early 2001. I use that as my second machine now, since purchasing a refurbished IBM Pentium 3.2GHz a year ago at Trailing Edge in Ottawa (Bell’s Corners, actually). [NOTE TO SELF: update photo on website. At some point.]
If you live in the Ottawa area I recommend Trailing Edge, by the way – excellent deals and friendly, helpful service. Another place I’d recommend because I’ve been satistifed with some computer bits and pieces that I bought online from there is Tiger Direct, located in Markham Ont. Those prices are hard to beat!
I use Dreamweaver 4 to do all my website work, but I still use Netscape’s “Page Edit” function to do my newsletter, for old time’s sake. Until my son and another tech buddy talked me into buying Dreamweaver 4, I was perfectly happy using Netscape to do everything on my site *and* newsletter. I also used a modest (free) FTP program to upload pages to my site.
My browser of preference is Firefox.
I don’t use Internet Explorer unless I have to. Why?
http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/news/2004/06/15/why-you-should-dump-internet-explorer/
Even when I have to use IE, I prefer to open it as a Firefox Extension called appropriately enough “Open in IE”.
If you use Firefox, do take a few minutes to check out the large selection of extensions (in the “Tools” drop-down menu at the top of the browser page) – you’ll be impressed with all of the time-savers you’ll find there!