Here’s a story of a sweet little gaming rig that belonged to a girl named Stephanie.
Stephanie had waited eagerly for Doom to go gold, knowing that her computer had to have the latest and greatest hardware of the time to run said game. So the minute that announcement was made, an order was placed with Dell. An order was also placed for memory, a big hard drive, and a beefy video card. Oh, and monitor and speakers.
Stephanie’s computer - named Eloise - ran Doom beautifully, as it did Half Life 2, Halo 2, and any other game she played at the time.
One cross country move and three months later, Eloise began blue screening. No reason, no logic, just continual blue screens with very ugly warnings. This time Dell was called in, and after ten hours on hold and two technicians’ visits, Stephanie had gutted her old computer, sent the shell back to Dell, and received a warranty replacement.
Eloise 2 was a great machine, and ran flawlessly for three years. Until Stephanie moved across the country again…
There were intiially no signs that Eloise was going to be trouble in California. The computer looked normal, ran normally, and all seemed fine. Until one day Stephanie decided the computer had been on for too long and she should reboot it. She turned it off, and left it, figuring she’d let it sit for ten minutes before restarting it.
And it wouldn’t restart. Absolutely nothing happened. No monitor, no keyboard lights, no drive light. Nada.
A nice computer technician came to look at Eloise, and delivered the veridict. “The motherboard is shot,” he said. “The electrical system is a mess.” But he got the computer on again, and said it could be ok for ages, or something could break again soon. There was just no way to tell.
Eloise was on for two days before her screensaver locked up and she refused to start again.
Once again, the computer technician was summoned. This time, he was asked to please start the computer again so Stephanie could salvage what she needed from Eloise before she died again.
He promptly got her started again, but this time there was a very serious warning. “You’re going to need a new computer,” they said. “This one is dying.”
“What if I need to start it again?” Stephanie asked.
“You can try jiggling the power cord.”
It had become that hopeless.
And so Stephanie pulled the last of what she needed off of Eloise, and sent her off to the great computer in the sky. There will be no more desktop computer for Stephanie. Or at least, not until Rage comes out.
Sleep well, dear Eloise, you served me well. Your Nanny (router), Weenie (Airport) and Skipperdee (Macbook pro) will be lonely without you.
