Sometime earlier in the decade, while I was studying in Waterloo I had told my parents that they needed to get a computer for themselves. I mean, I figured that it would have given them an opportunity to burn CDs or do online banking without me having to get involved. I was fully prepared to actually help them out by assembling a system. I had some experience doing so from having put together my own computer. As long as you get the right parts that go together, the actual act of assembling the system is then a matter of plugging things into the right spots. Easy enough, right? Well, one day I got a call from my father telling me that they’d gone ahead and purchased a computer on their own.
For a brief moment I was kind of happy for them to have had the courage to go ahead and make the purchase. Then I remembered that they had no idea what they were purchasing. So, with dread I started asking them details. He honestly had no idea, other than the fact that they’d asked the sales guy whether it was the best that they could get. At that point I just knew that no good came of that. They’re not gamers…why the hell do they need the fastest computer? They don’t. For a few days after the call I couldn’t concentrate at school. All I could think about was their new computer. When I got home I immediately started checking things out. Well…it didn’t seem so bad at first. Although, it was clearly something that was slapped together. Then I heard how much they paid for the whole thing. I was dumbfounded. They paid maybe 2.5 times what it would have cost if I had done it. Looking back now, it makes me want to gag. I suggested that they return it, but my father was insistent that we keep it. His reasons varied from “well it’s already there” and “we were told it’s the best!” Riiiight.
Well, I suppose I could have let it all go if it worked perfectly. Thing is, the damn thing always had issues. Sometimes when mom would turn it on it would just get stuck on the BIOS screen. No amount of rebooting used to let it get past. Often I’d have to reach behind, unplug the whole thing for a minute, return the plug and only then would it go forward. Other times, network connectivity just wouldn’t come up leading to frantic calls of “Jay! The Internet isn’t working again!“ Mom would call me sometimes telling me that the thing is so slow. She’d try starting a browser but it would take minutes before it would come up. After some digging I found that the box only had 512MB of RAM. What in blazes?! Seriously. No wonder it took so long. It’s not that mom’s completely impatient; the system just really sucks.
Anyway, the other day I decided that I didn’t want to make them put up with such a system anymore, so I bought 2GB of RAM for their computer. I went over today to swap the DIMMs out. I made the switch and reconnected everything. When mom switched it on…nothing came up on the monitor. In fact, the motherboard started beeping like mad. After a good half hour of swapping the memory again and diagnosing anything obvious that I could think of, nothing was bringing it back to life. I just laughed and declared the computer dead: I think the motherboard is fried. I looked at my mom and we both laughed. Despite losing the box, I think we were both happy to see that piece of shit box kick the bucket. Actually, I’m sure there’s a fix for it, but I don’t think it’s worth it. Instead I offered to give them the desktop box that’s just sitting in my room unused. Heck, why not? My box had a slower processor than theirs, but at least the damn thing worked.
So, that’s what I’ve been up to. I need to spend an hour or two “cleaning up” the system before I hand it over. I also need to set it up just enough to get my mom ready to do all the stuff she used to do with the other system. I’m willing to part ways with the box. Eventually, I’m pretty sure I’ll get it back; they might move on to something like a Mac. In any case, I’ll have a little piece of mind, for sure.
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