Jen's Blog

name that computer!

I am spending this beautiful summer day in my office building a new computer. The hard drive is formatting as I type...should be another 20 minutes or so. I've been thinking of replacing my current computer for a new months, but was hesitating because it's a major purchase and a major pain to do. A new computer always sounds nice, until you realize you'll have to set one up, get used to a new OS, transfer all of your old files to the new hard drive, without transferring all the junk and old stuff that caused you problems with the old computer in the first place.

My old computer is old. Parts of it are from when I lived in Iowa, which was nearly 6 years ago. We have a DSL connection, so I had never given much thought about my modem until last month when we lost our fast speed internet. I had a 28.8 modem!!! I have no idea how old it is, where it came from, or why I still had such a beast.

I am a believer in computer karma. If you start off with a brand new system, you start with no karma, or at least reasonably good or neutral karma. As the machine ages, and you start replacing bits of hardware and software, things get corrupted inside. It remembers that you used to have a SoundBlaster sound card, once upon a time, and insists on loading the drivers every time you boot up, even though you haven't had one in years. That's bad computer karma. All those old mouse drivers, game demos that you thought you deleted, the virus that Norton found and fixed; they're all there on your system, building up like plaque on your teeth. Even getting a new hard drive doesn't always help, since little bits hang on in your bios, loading themselves each time you start up.

My computer has bad computer karma. I had considered just buying some new components for it to get it up to speed. More memory, a new video card, maybe a DVD drive. This is what I've been doing for awhile, keeping most of the old computer, and replacing parts of it. This new system will be one of the first brand new systems I've ever owned. The only things that are going to be carried over is my monitor (a lovely 15" LCD monitor), my keyboard (an ancient relic from Gary, I love it dearly) and a few peripherals like a scanner, handspring connector, camera memory card reader, and wireless network antenna. No hard drives, no CD or floppy drives, mice, modems, or anything like that will be moved. And I'll be extra careful in moving files onto the virgin hard drive (well, I'm currently installing Microsoft XP onto it, so I guess it's deflowered now.)

So only a few concerns are left for me regarding my new machine. Primarily: what to name the new computer? My old system was called Gromit, after the terrific claymation duo Wallace and Gromit. Gary already has a computer named Wallace, so that's out. We have a lot of devices named after Futurama characters, so this may be an option. It's important to give the computer a good name, since I'll be living with it for at least a few years.

My top choice right now is Leela, but until I don't have to decide until I finish building it.

Posted by Jen at August 2, 2003 06:03 PM