пʼятниця, 27 липня 2012 р.

Slow Computer Tales



I have friends who like to pretend that they know something about computers, but the second something goes wrong, they get all in a tizzy. I believe, based on my observations of these silly people I call my friends, that the slow pc is perhaps the most frustrating situation for many of them. Though these relatively intelligent people are able to understand the various potential causes of a slow computer, very few of them can actually tolerate the issue emotionally. They have been known to do some very odd things in response to this very basic computer problem; things that offer nothing in terms of a solution to the problem and that, if anything, only serve to make matters worse.
One of my friends actually threw her computer out of her apartment. I know there are ads on TV about people doing this sort of thing, but my friend, in a fit of rage actually chucked her PC off the terrace. The appalling thing about it was that she narrowly missed hitting a dog and decapitating him with her laptop. The reason why I find this story to be important as well as fascinating is that it exemplifies the power that the average PC has over our emotional status. A slow computer can cause a person to stop thinking rationally and do things that they would regard as inappropriate. My friend was not stupid or even inconsiderate. Indeed, she is a dog-lover. But she had simply had it with her slow-moving laptop.
Another friend I know beat his computer with a stick. This situation took place a number of years ago before the advent of a lot of the newer technologies that make it easy to maintain a computer that runs fast. But, needless to say, the act was somewhat shocking. Computers cost more at the time when he was abusing his with a tree branch and I recall the group of people who knew about it weren’t sure what to say or to think. Again, however, this was a situation in which the computer was running slow. It wasn’t that my friend thought that a slow computer would respond to a good beating, he just couldn’t take it anymore. I remember some people in my group thinking that he had gone easy on the machine after it lost some of his data and did some other inappropriate behaviors. They said he should have wacked it with a two-by-four.
A slow computer is nothing to sneeze at. I actually have theories that slow computers cause family problems and contribute to animal and child abuse. A slow computer fix that’s dragging itself along often starts to slow down in increments that aren’t always terribly noticeable.  A person can habituate to this sort of slow slow-down and fail to even realize what’s happening until they’ve been thoroughly sucked into the reality of slow-motion. If your computer is running slowly and you’ve just realized that it’s frustrating you, take some time to do troubleshooting. Don’t throw your computer out the window or beat it with a stick. Fixing a slow computer is usually fairly simple and rational and takes only a miniscule amount of time.