My laptop died yesterday. The hard drive did, anyway. It was no real surprise, as the hd has gotten goobered on me thrice in the past 9 months, and the computer’s been nothing but trouble since day one. Fortunately I am anal about backups and keeping my original software discs where I can get to them easily, and had already chosen the replacement for it and put aside the money to buy it, so all the crash cost me was mild irritation. It also gave me an idea for a poll–half serious, half silly.
[ol]
[li]The Serious Question: If your computer were to die on you while you were reading this sentence, how greatly would you be screwed, on a scale of 1 to 10?[/li][li]The Silly Question: As you may have gathered, I hated the old computer with the heat of a thousand Bic lighters. How might I best dispose of it and simultaneously vent my rage toward it?[/li][/ol]
Oh, about a 3. I’d lose a few minutes while I transferred my current data from last night’s backup onto my laptop, and I’d be able to keep working while I waited for a new machine to be built. But I’d rather not have to mess with the expense and hassle of buying and setting up a new machine right now.
The Serious Question: If your computer were to die on you while you were reading this sentence, how greatly would you be screwed, on a scale of 1 to 10?
Oh, maybe 3. I use Mozy, so my data is safe. fixing things would be tedious, but at most I’d lose a day’s work.
[ol]
[li]The Serious Question: If your computer were to die on you while you were reading this sentence, how greatly would you be screwed, on a scale of 1 to 10?[/ol][/li][/quote]
Probably about a 1, but only for the frustration factor of having to replace hardware and restore from backup. I’m currently running RAID0 mirroring which means I have two internal hard drives with bit for bit duplicate data. This mirrored drive is then imaged onto yet another hard drive in a swappable external drive tray. The RAID drive is imaged to the swappable drive on a nightly basis and I have 3 of these trays which are rotated to off-site storage and periodically scanned for data integrity, bad blocks, etc. Any flawed drives are replaced immediately.
Not to suggest something that could atually make you money but parting out malfunctioning notebooks on eBay and selling the good components can often yield a surprising chunk of change.
In one sense, not a lot. My PC is backed up nightly and restoration is a simple matter. In another sense, I’d be royally screwed because I’ve just been sent a job application form and that’s yet to be backed up/
-1. I’m reading this at work on a thin client. If it died this second, I would go to one of our depressingly many empty offices, grab another one, plug it in, and keep typing.
My laptop would be a bit more of a pain. I’m going to do a full backup to my external disk today or tomorrow, but pretty much everything I really need is in my email server.
Get some kind of heavy canvas or a bulletin board, open it up, and mount all the parts on it. Take it outside and throw rotten tomatoes, or darts, or poo at it. Get it nice and dirty. Sell to a modern art museum as a statement of a rebellion against technology for $10 million.
