I used to build my own in the 80s and 90s, taught the boys how to buy parts and assemble them. That's when they were more expensive to purchase complete. Now PCs are so cheap due to mass production and competition, that I just purchase new ones. On any given day I move from a newer Dell laptop to an older Dell desktop (floor model) to an iMac and an iPad. Just depends on what I am working on. Most of what I do resides on servers located within the University. Those are Linux boxes running MySQL. I've got three of those, one for each project.
It's unreal to me how inexpensive and how powerful these devices are these days. And the cost of mass storage is also very inexpensive. Most of my projects are database driven, and I need lots of storage space for content. In our latest project, we will be digitizing 120,00 thousand photos, tons of audio and video, and an uncountable number of pages of documents. Try remembering all those file names
. I'm just now trying out cloud computing as a storage option, but I normally like owning my servers and storage space, makes me feel more secure
.
Cheers,
TomK