# Do you have James Earl Jones on your PC? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 26, 2011, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-james-earl-jones-on-your-pc/590332 "2011-07-26T00:44:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MysteryFellow63427](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e4f/32.png) [@MysteryFellow63427](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MysteryFellow63427)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2011, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-james-earl-jones-on-your-pc/590332/21 "2011-07-27T20:37:49Z")
What a throwback. I did have James Earl Jones on my PC, back in 1996 when I cared enough to customize all my sounds! ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2011, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-james-earl-jones-on-your-pc/590332/22 "2011-07-27T21:27:04Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > I used to have my machine all dolled-up with Monty Python and Simpsons. Probably in the late 90s-early 2000s. > > But like most of you, something changed and I ended up muting most of my sounds. > > Does anyone keep on sounds for “new mail” or “incoming IM” anymore? How about in an office? That’d be awful! I have Worf’s (Star Trek) “Captain, incoming message!” for my new email alerts. Had it for years (The file date says 7/13/2004). ---
**Author:** ![stanger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@stanger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stanger)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2011, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-james-earl-jones-on-your-pc/590332/23 "2011-07-27T23:29:37Z")
The only sound I put into my PC was stripped from an old AOL bit where Alyson Hannigan says “You’ve got mail!” I have it plugged into my GMail. Can’t have her here in person to tell me :: sigh:: so it is the next best thing. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-james-earl-jones-on-your-pc/590332/24 "2011-07-28T04:45:34Z")
> [@Hypno-Toad](#): > > …Chuck Heston yelling, “Soylent Green is PEOPLE!”… in my mind this would be an excellent exit windows sound for some reason I must be odd, as I get older I’ve gone from whatever sounds were on it when I got it to wanting it to be “homey” or feel “lived in” far as computers go. james, its a sad day, our babbage machine has been rendered obsolete by this new thing that looks like a damned light bulb ---
**Author:** ![Snickers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@Snickers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snickers)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-james-earl-jones-on-your-pc/590332/25 "2011-07-28T14:49:38Z")
My husband’s a Dave. Naturally he had a bunch of HAL phrases. The default “bonk!” when you can’t something was, “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t let you do that.” And of course, “Hello, Dave,” on startup. ---
**Author:** ![cuberdon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/45deac/32.png) [@cuberdon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cuberdon)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-james-earl-jones-on-your-pc/590332/26 "2011-07-29T16:35:44Z")
No James Earl Jones, but an old boss of mine had his email notifications set so that when he got an email from _his_ boss, it would play a whipcrack. Even without him explaining, the first time we heard it, we knew. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-james-earl-jones-on-your-pc/590332/27 "2011-07-29T16:38:35Z")
I used to have a sort of generic air raid siren .wav file as my Windows startup sound. I think I created it by cropping the beginning of a Future Sound of London song. Nowadays I just turn off the Windows sounds. ---
**Author:** ![DragonAsh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/db5fbb/32.png) [@DragonAsh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DragonAsh)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-james-earl-jones-on-your-pc/590332/28 "2011-07-29T22:10:38Z")
When I was freelancing I had Outlook set up to play a sonar ping - something [like this](http://www.freesound.org/tagsViewSingle.php?id=12021). I had it set up to only play the sound when the email was from a client. One day, I went to meet a client for lunch. I told my wife (well, girlfriend at the time) to check my email if she heard the ‘submarine sound’ (this was before smartphones & blackberries & the like). Anyway, off I went. That day, one of my smaller clients’ email accounts apparently got hacked or something, because I started getting emails from the address every 30 seconds or so. For over three hours. When I got home, my threatening-to-be-exgirlfriend damn near shoved the PC speakers down my throat. She was scared that I’d get a real job email so of course had to keep running over to the PC to make sure there wasn’t a real email coming in. Boy, was she pissed \ Every now and then I’ll give her my best Sean Connery voice “Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please” and play the sound. Cracks her up every time. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-james-earl-jones-on-your-pc/590332/29 "2011-07-29T22:30:34Z")
This is one of those things that sounds really cool to me on paper, but when I actually go to implement it I get instantly sick of it. I just can’t stand it when the computer makes sounds I haven’t initiated myself. The only ringtone I’ve found acceptable for my phone is Harder Better Faster Stronger, which starts with some muted white noise. I love the song, but I always rush to answer the phone before it switches from white noise to an actual beat. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2011, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-james-earl-jones-on-your-pc/590332/30 "2011-07-30T04:33:35Z")
If you’re old like me, you probably remember Bumblebee Tuna jingle: “Yum, yum, Bumble Bee, Bumble Bee tu-una!” I had a WAV file of that on my computer, and I edited it down so that it just played the “tu-una!” bit and set that as the default ‘error’ sound. Everything went fine until one weekend when we were out of town and my sister-in-law was housesitting; something went awry with the computer and everything she did started throwing errors. By the end of the weekend the computer had sung “tu-una!” at her about 3 gazillion times…she was less than amused. ---
**Author:** ![nachtmusick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ac91a4/32.png) [@nachtmusick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nachtmusick)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2011, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-james-earl-jones-on-your-pc/590332/31 "2011-07-31T02:21:44Z")
Yep. Two computers ago I discovered .wav’s and spent an afternoon finding them and loading them up. Used “What is thy bidding…” for the start-up. Never bothered with it again, though. My current computer remains on stock Windows sounds, and probably always will. ---
**Author:** ![Jaguars](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaguars/32/5879_2.png) [@Jaguars](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaguars)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2011, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-james-earl-jones-on-your-pc/590332/32 "2011-07-31T11:47:24Z")
Teehee I used to have Lords of the Realm II sounds on an old computer._Delete_ _‘Slaughter These peasants?’_ _‘Noe problem, Guv!’_ figured prominently somehow. Then one day I heard ‘Right between the eyes!’ (that infamous windows has encountered a problem dialog, which occured often because that computer ran Windows ME) followed by an animal snarl from my dad, who had just lost some important work. I was asked to take the sounds off. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-james-earl-jones-on-your-pc/590332.md?page=1)