Comparative Reality

I've been suffering from a really nasty cold that one of my daughters brought home from school. Not quite the flu, but more than just the sniffles. I've got that wonderful "my head is packed with concrete" feeling, my throat is raw, my stomach is in knots...yeah, that's probably enough info.

Anyway, I did something very, very stupid while in the worst throes of this illness: I bought a computer.

...

Now, I need a new computer: In fact, I've needed a new one for years. An old AMD with 1 GB of RAM doesn't cut it for much these days, and the whole machine was showing its age. It's housed in an old HP case, that's at least...er...crap. I honestly don't know how old it is. 10 years? Maybe even 11 or 12. It's a big case. Which has been good, because it's had plenty of space to muck around with. Other than the case, the only other piece of original equipment is the 3.5" drive. It might even still work, but I don't remember whether I bothered to hook it up the last time I was poking around in the machine.

The problem with the big case is that the drives are a long way away from the motherboard. I had to buy rounded drive cables, not because they looked cool, but because they were the only version that was long enough to reach. I think I have three hard disk drives in there, but I might be mistaken. Maybe it's just two, with odd partitions.

The machine is a Frankenstein's monster of upgraded parts. I would add some RAM, then upgrade the motherboard and CPU, then maybe add a drive, replace a video card, add a CD drive, upgrade the motherboard/CPU again a few years later, buy a new power supply...

One drive died a couple of years ago, and that caused all sorts of problems. I made do with a crippled machine for a few months, and then finally bought a new drive, reinstalled XP, and got it mostly working again. But so many things don't work well: XP is crufted up all to hell, and the machine is a bit balky. About a quarter of the time I turn it on, it will start spooling up, then shut down. The DVD drive works maybe 20% of the time. The computer seems happy with it, until you put a disk in. Then it gets a little upset. Rebooting two or three times usually clears that up, though.

At this point, I use the machine for e-mail, and to use VPN. But it seems to struggle a bit too much with that, too.

So, finally, while sick, and frustrated by the machine's slowness (and the fact that I had to use a paperclip to open the DVD drive...again), I looked for a good, cheap computer. Obviously, I want something that will last a few years (though probably not quite as long as this one), but I also need something fairly inexpensive.

So I did what I swore I would never, ever do, and which I have said is an extremely stupid, pathetically n00b decision: I bought a refurbished machine.

From Fry's.

Yes, I know.

Shut up. I said that I know how stupid that was. Go ahead, send me those brochures about vacation homes in the sunny Florida Everglades.

But it was so damned cheap! And, as I mentioned, I was sick. The cold medicine clouded my thinking, and made me think that buying a refurbished machine (from Fry's) wasn't the stupidest idea in history. Seriously, it's really "Hey, let's bring this big, wooden horse into our city!" levels of blindingly stupid optimism.

The computer arrived today. So far, it hasn't exploded. I take that as a good sign, even though I haven't actually plugged it in yet. This weekend, it gets its first set of stress tests. It does have a warranty, so I'll damn well be doing my best to make sure that it won't crap out on me on day 91.

Even so: Don't ever, ever do what I did.