My colleagues are a fickle lot. Their £250 Challenge computers all had myriad faults, but they can’t stop going on about my garish case, non-operational USB ports and lack of warranty. As far as I’m concerned, though, that’s the sort of charm that money can’t buy, and it’s part of the reason why you should vote for my machine as the £250 Challenge winner.

Take Darien’s second-hand selection, for instance. He may have won favour with our esteemed editor, but that machine is a whole world of pain waiting to happen. I know that mine hasn’t got a warranty, either, but it’s build from brand-new parts, some of which function as they should. Darien’s machine is made from years-old hardware and there’s no telling the stresses and strains that it’s been through. Buying a second-hand car is normally dependant on its mileage; if it’s done 200,000 miles then it’s a less attractive proposition and will almost certainly break sooner rather than later, and the same is true here.

David Fearon’s machine, at least, is new. And it has a warranty and, as he’s pointed out, a screen. Even though a screen wasn’t part of the recipe for this particular challenge. But, of course, it’s a laptop: so it’s slower than my machine in both practical applications and games, not overclockable and not really worth considering as a main system if you want to more than have a few browser windows and Office applications open at the same time.

The Free PC, on the other hand, relied on pure human generosity; for that, I can applaud Stu. I can’t applaud him, though, for acquiring one of the slowest machines that I’ve ever seen. When it arrived in the office, it took forty-five minutes to shut down. Two of us went out to get lunch, came back, and then ate it, and the Compaq was still churning through files and processes. In theory a free PC is a nice, cuddly prospect, but in practise it’s an absolute nightmare.

Or you could vote for Bayon’s machine, described by our editor as “the dullest PC ever“. Is that really a competition prize? Really? They’ll be no need for its fully-fledged operating system or warranty after it’s put you to sleep.

So, that leaves one sensible choice: the self-build PC. My rivals have mentioned that it has no warranty, with Bayon doubting that I’d come round to fix the machine should it go wrong – but I will, if you’re on a tube line. It’s also a proper PC, assembled with as much new componentry as love and attention: it’s not a bargain-basement laptop, knackered second-hand disaster or museum piece. It’s a modern PC with a current-generation graphics card and overclocked processor as well as a decent OS: as any Linux advocate will tell you, it’s now possible to use Ubuntu as your full OS rather than Windows, and it’s getting better all the time.

My self-build PC is a machine with style as well as substance. The chassis has personality in spades, and the interior is neat, tidy and well-organised – in fact, it’d be a stylish and modern addition to any living room or study, which is something that can’t be said of the other machines here. Should you ever wish to upgrade – not that you’ll need to for a while, because it’s the fastest of the bunch – it’ll be much easier than groping around inside Dave’s poorly-organised chassis or Darien’s dust-ridden disaster. And they don’t even make the parts for the free PC any more.

My machine was called the ‘Warrior 250PCWGFS’ because Peter Tennant, a commentator on these fine blogs, reasoned that “to be a real computer, it has to have a monumentally uncatchy name”, and he’s right. This is a real PC. It’s not David’s identikit laptop, Stu’s glacial-slow lump, Darien’s years-old cast-off or Bayon’s monotone mess. It’s a proper PC, built by my own fair hands and now ready to be handed on to another custodian.

It’s also the only one worth voting for: no-one wants any of those other machines, really, because they’re all too boring. Vote for the PC with personality and reward ingenuity, imagination and proper PC building. Click here and do the right thing. You know you want to.