I found this piece on the NYTimes Web site (free registration required.)
DANA LUCIANO has moved three times in the past two years. Each time, Dr. Luciano, who is an assistant professor of English at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., has taken along boxes containing her old and obsolete computers.
Some of the machines are now stored in her basement, but others are scattered around her office, including an Apple PowerBook containing the only copy of some research she did on 19th-century mourning rituals.
For years, because of a hardware glitch, she has been unable to take the data off the computer. So she simply keeps the machine around, consulting it as she might a reference book whenever she needs to look at the material.
