The Goodwill PC grinds to a halt

Friday, January 30th, 2009

So, the £250 PC Challenge. To bring you up to speed, while Tim was stuffing my colleagues’ underwear with £20 notes so they could run out and build their PCs, I was left to go cap-in-hand to see if I could build or acquire one for precisely zero pence. Before I explain my progress thus far, I’ll just recap everybody else’s for those who’ve not been following events:

As we speak motor-mouthed deputy editor David Fearon is bringing his unique bartering style to the shops on Tottenham Court Road in an attempt to wangle a £250 PC out of our tight-fisted neighbours.

The boy/beast that is staff-writer Mike Jennings has already assembled his stunted gaming PC and now spends most of his day making it watch eighties action movies in the hope that all this machismo will shame it into a spontaneous upgrade. The technology equivalent of putting hairs on its chest.

Taking inspiration from Gordon Gecko, David Bayon donned a power suit and simply glowered at the Internet until it offered him a cheap PC in exchange for leaving it alone. He’s currently puffing away on a large cigar and shouting “sell sell” at Darien Graham-Smith,  who hasn’t spoken since escaping the blatant falsehoods dwelling in the eighth level of hell that is Ebay. He now wears the look of a man standing in the ash at the end of the world, and we can only assume he’ll come back to us when he’s ready.

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