Printed from www.pcpro.co.uk
Posted on January 19th, 2010 by Stuart Turton
A minute’s applause for the passing of my awful PC
My desktop computer is dying. It’s contracted some sort of virulent tech plague that’s sweeping through the components, knocking out my graphics card a couple of weeks ago, and causing my RAM to wobble – though not fall down – over the weekend. It’s even developed a death rattle from somewhere behind the fan.
Computers are like cars in this respect, they tend to teeter on the verge of death for a while and then collapse in a spectacular heap overnight. And while I should be wringing my hands, consulting priests, shamans and witch doctors while tearing the labs apart for replacement parts, I find myself blissfully unconcerned. You see, I don’t like my desktop PC and I’m going to watch it die with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.
I’ve written before how its first act was to draw my blood, and that single moment has come to define our entire relationship. Myself and my PC despise one another. It’s a snarling, spitting ball of technological fury that’s yet to meet a game it can’t put in a headlock. Crysis minced onto its hard drive and was crushed, Call of Juarez arrived with a swagger and was sent away with a limp, Supreme Commander – well, let’s just say it’s merely adequate Commander these days.
If my PC was a person it would be that massive, grunting steroid of a bloke in the corner of the gym who lifts the equipment rather than the weights. I, in contrast, have arms like wet spaghetti, glasses and the bookish, absent mindedness of the quite stupid playing merely dim. We’re ill matched, and more so because while the case fans expel hell’s very own heat, and it roars like all the hosts of Heaven descending on judgement day, most of the time it’s running Word, Chrome and, if I’m really pushing the boat out, Media Player.
It’s like asking Jason Statham to play with a Barbie. And worse than the heat and the noise, is the look of it. There’s so much multi-coloured cabling inside the damn thing that it looks like I’ve stuffed the entire Amazon rainforest in there, and the amount of extension leads and thick black cabling required for the monitors and speakers and assorted other nonsense puts me in mind of that terrifying computer thing in Superman III – anybody else have nightmares about that as a child?
I’ve been toying with the idea of getting rid of it for some time, and now it’s going to the great wafer in the sky I feel a burden’s been lifted. And yet, while I’d like to replace it with a timid, slightly innocuous laptop that’s actually a thing of game-playing beauty (I’m thinking of the secretary who takes off her glasses, shakes her hair out and becomes a supermodel) my only option appears to be one of Alienware’s laptops – which despite monstrous Mike Jennings’ ridiculous protestations – are all uglier than the elephant man pulling faces.
The fact of my computing life is that I spend 10% of my time playing games, and the rest writing. I can’t do that if every time I turn it on my eyeballs melt under a blaze of neon. Is it so hard for PC makers to create a gaming laptop that doesn’t look like the backdrop to a fourteen-year-old’s first wet dream?
Anyway, I’m going to keep an eye out for a grown-up gaming laptop, and in the mean-time I’m off to watch my computer claw its way into silicon hell. Who knew man could hate machine with such fury? Anybody else despise their PCs – or is just me?
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20 Responses to “ A minute’s applause for the passing of my awful PC ”
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January 19th, 2010 at 9:18 am
A splendid read!
January 19th, 2010 at 10:34 am
very good read and understanding what some computer users go through
Send it to me and I fix it for you
You fall back in love with it like you did the first time you meet
Mark
January 19th, 2010 at 11:33 am
I’ve had my eye out for a similar laptop – a reasonably normal-looking device with the ability to play games.
The main problem is that the mid-range mobile GPUs on the market seem to lack the power of the mid-range desktop equivalents. The closest I’ve come to a decent looking system is the current A-list Dell, which at least should be capable of some gaming at a reasonable price.
January 19th, 2010 at 11:55 am
Check out RockDirect’s extreme range.
January 19th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
It’s a terrible shame that Dell is discontinuing the XPS M17xx range. I’m typing this on my old M1710 that has served me better than well for years now. It’s hot and heavy, but does any job better than well.And if you turn off the bling LED lights in the speakers and vents, doesn’t look too gaudy. I was looking forward to replacing it with an M1750, only to find that such a beast will never exist. I fear I’ll have to go Alienware, or maybe splurge on the insane Dell Precision M6400 Covet in blood orange. Tres bling.
January 19th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Mark, do you really think Stuart would find it difficult to find someone to fix his computer considering he works for a magazine called PC Pro?
And secondly, judging by the wording of his blog, I doubt very much he wants this computer repaired, I think it’s this line which gives it away:
“I don’t like my desktop PC and I’m going to watch it die with a smile on my face and a song in my heart”
January 19th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Noooooooooo not a gaming laptop! Buy an IBM/Lenovo machine, preferably the corporate weight T series, of almost any age. Then put an SSD in it – I’ve just done a T60 with a 64GB SATA SSD, and before xmas a T43 with a 42GB IDE SSD – in the latter case the drive cost more than the machine. That’s your writing/surfing/media thing sorted out. Then get a gaming system separately…
In fact I have a surfeit of T61’s at the moment, should you wish to come and haggle a tad…
January 19th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/forum/posting.php?mode=reply&t=338692
January 19th, 2010 at 9:39 pm
Myabe you should read your sister magazine CustomPC. I can’t fault my MSI gt725 laptop. Stands out a bit but doesn’t shout in your face when your used to it.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:40 am
It’s funny; after reading your article, my thoughts jumped to exactly the same place as Paul Read, so much so that I double checked on the Dell website to review their current XPS range – which whilst still great with their 4670 graphics, just don’t cut it as they used to. I still have a few friends with the M17xx and M15xx series, which look stunning, and are powerful – pity there is no suitable replacement. But good luck on the search!
January 20th, 2010 at 8:32 am
Really entertaining read – made me smile as I still have a desktop that I battle with every so often.
If I was in your position I would go for a Core i7 or a Core i3 based laptop with an HD 45XX or higher graphics card as that will cover all bases.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
Great read; many thanks.
How we love them when they first arrive.
We marvel at how fast they are; we swear we simply cannot, ever, use all that storage; we inwardly squeal every time we open a previously undiscovered flap and discover another lurking interface.
And then we fall out of love.
It’s ugly, slow, the files are all over the place, who knows what garbage has built up on the drives. And would you look at that dust!
They have to go.
And then you open the box and there’s this new relationship; full of joyous expectation. Gleaming, quiet, clean, powerful, small but capable. You just have to love it.
But you’ll hate it in 3 years time.
Or not? My frined as an Amstrad with Locoscript; says they’ll be embalmed together.
It doesn’t have to be that way; give it a second chance. Perhaps a break might do the trick? Or counselling? A vow to try again, start over, an OS upgrade and a really detemined session with Disk Doctor?
Give it a try, you can have again what you had before.
January 21st, 2010 at 8:22 am
I find myself in a very similar situation, the only difference being that my PC has been donated down to my 15 year old daughter, who now has a smile wider than than the opening of the mersey tunnel, because of the prospect of being able to finally being able to play Oblivion at full resolution and the graphics turned up to high. I have spent considerable time researching Laptops that can be used for gaming but does not remind me of a Southend Promenade boy racer in a vauxhall corsa with a loud exhaust. I have eventually come to the conclusion that my next considerable purchase will be with a company called Kobalt Computers they have a range of laptops that scream with power and finnesse and not with obnoxiuos lighting and fanfare. Does anybody else have any experience or recommendations in the field?
January 21st, 2010 at 9:52 am
Yeah, I also hate my desktop PC. Happy 30th birthday, Stoo. You’re a handsome fella.
January 21st, 2010 at 10:15 am
HAPPY 30th STOOOOO!!!!! I don’t have a desk top just a lap top but I do hate it anyway!
January 21st, 2010 at 11:03 am
From pride and joy to machine from hell in a depressingly short time is an uncomfortable experience. In the mid/late 90’s, I was an undergraduate on a 4 yr sandwich Business Computing course and a fair bit older than the unmotivated skate boarder types that accounted for a lot of the year group. While everyone else made do with Windows 3.1 (uni didn’t get 95 until 2000, when I graduated!), I lashed out on a Dell 200 with NT3.51 and (for then) a huge 32Mb RAM memory and 3Gb hdd which was just about £2k. My mates at the time marvelled at the device with awe (translating the cost into an equivalent amount of beer just upset them). The march of time and technology made the thing quite puny by the end of the course but long before that, the machine showed an unreliable streak equivalent to dog baring its teeth. First the hdd chucked it. Then an upgrade to infamous SP2 for NT (SP in that case stood for suicide pack) killed it stone dead. A third innings with new o-s soon exposed the fact that the extra RAM sockets didn’t work, then the cpu fan went noisy and finally the psu chucked in the towel. Egged on by fellow students, I started researching components and bought a pile of bits, which they put together for me in the final year (1999-2000). This AMD K6-3 powered machine was made for less than half the cost of the Dell – and still exists complete with original 17″ (PC Pro A listed at the time) Mitsubishi monitor. I’ve been hooked on computer hardware ever since and have never been tempted to buy another machine ‘off the shelf’. Many machines have followed but none have been as scary as the Dell. The moral of all the stories here merely underlines the truth in the adage that few things on the planet have greater capacity than a computer to drive one slowly mad.
January 21st, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Maybe you’ll get some new components for your birthday, which is today. Happy birthday Stoo!
January 21st, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Why not go for an Apple Macbook Pro,you can then go jump between game world with bootcamp and move back to realworld. New ones due out soon with probably better graphics card. The screen is already one of the best and ugly does not come into its vocabulary
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:19 am
I never realised that the Amazon rainforest was so full of “multi-coloured cabling”. I’m now a little older and wiser !
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:39 pm
I know exactly what you mean, after shelling out £136 for a sim free Nokia that has given me nothing but hassle, I added up all of the hours it has caused me to waste, and reckoned that it exceeded £500. I decided that I did not want to send it for repair as it had confidential data on it and it was bricked anyway after failing a firmware update, and leaked despite having an ip54 rating supposedly, so I put a hammer through it. Suddenly I feel like a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders, I’m never going to have to waste time on it again, hooray!! Seriously this was a good decision, phones are cheap and my time valuable, life is too short to endure nonsense from poor technology, dump it, take the loss and move on with the benefit of the experience gained. Enduring stress is bad for your health.