New Computer

On Wednesday last week my computer died. I had been expecting it for a couple of weeks, as my computer had been struggling to start up. Then on Wednesday it just point blank refused.

I tried to load a LiveCD (a CD with a full Linux installation on it that boots straight off the CD, leaving your hard drive untouched), and that didn't work. This led me to believe that my motherboard (the main circuit board inside your computer that all the other components, like your graphics card and your hard drive, plug into) had died. I looked at the errors appearing on my screen, and that confirmed my initial prognosis.

Great, so I needed a new motherboard. There was only one problem: my computer was so old that my components wouldn't be able to fit into the new motherboard. That meant that I basically needed to get a whole new computer. Fortunately I could keep my DVD drive and my hard drive, as those components don't change as often as the others, and they were fairly new themselves (I needed a bigger hard drive about 2 years ago).

So on Wednesday evening I scoured the Internet using Hannah's laptop and found some product lists of the computer suppliers with whom the company I work for has accounts, and chose my hardware. On Thursday I placed my order and paid for it, and on Friday afternoon I took my new computer (still in individual components) home.

I'm not ashamed to say it: on Friday I was as excited as a kid at Christmas who got the present he'd been wanting.

One we were home I proceeded to put the computer together, and recorded it in photographs, which you can find in our image gallery. I was very chuffed when I started my "new" computer up for the first time, and it worked flawlessly, despite all the changes in hardware!

So now I'm a happy chappy, with my fast new computer and no problems.

For a more technical explanation, you can read my "Linux is boring" post on my technical blog.