Our Dell PC has been getting creakier, probably from all the viruses, spyware, cookies, and Trojan horses that it has picked up over its two-year life. The Dell functions adequately for the grown-ups, but the two gamers (Warcraft, Sims 2) in our family have been complaining about slow response time, occasional freezes and even crashes. With a 1.7 Ghz Pentium III, 640MB RAM, a 140 GB hard drive, and a Sony DVD-RW drive that I installed earlier this year, the PC has too much going for it to discard or upgrade to a newer model.
Last weekend I copied all the files, erased the hard disk, and re-installed Windows and all our application programs. It took a good chunk out of Saturday and Sunday. It was the first time I had gone through the clean re-install process for a Windows machine (we have been using Apple products since 1981 and have a couple of Macs running in a different room), and I needn’t bore you with the details.( Later I found instructions on the Internet which would have saved me some steps.)
PCs suck: there’s no other consumer product, even an old car, that demands so much of our time. With the potential damage hackers can cause with identity theft and stealing from our bank accounts, maintaining a PC requires eternal vigilance, like keeping a gun in the house. No, we can’t turn them off because computers confer so many benefits, but the frustration is building below the surface. Once someone proposes a viable alternative, we, and perhaps many others, will exit from the Wintel world. (Precedent: we turned off our cable TV after 20 years and switched to satellite. We’ve been very pleased.) © 2005 Stephen Yuen
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