Discussions

Hello!  Good evening.  Or good morning, depending on your time zone. This is the internet, after all. 

INDEED.

How does one introduce oneself to a crowd of faces that one cannot see? And a crowd that one probably would not want to even if one could? 

I suppose I could tell you all to go and read my Bio as some form of introduction.  It's quite complimentary about me.  Perhaps over-egging it.  To quote David Cameron (and few do), "Thank you, if I'd heard that introduction I'd be delighted to see me too."  Hysterical.  Self-depracating, verging on arrogant.  A tone I'm all to happy to steal.  Sorry, adopt.

So how should I begin?  How to adapt this self-depracating yet disarmingly self-important tone for the world of

THE INTERNET?

Perhaps I should start with the fact that, once upon a time, I was somebody?

YES.

Halcyon days.  Drink-addled nights.  Once upon a time, I was somebody in this world.  This world of... hardware.

I had a site.  A website.  Quite a popular one, in fact.  It was called Bit-tech.  It was the dogs danglies.  I ran it with a group of my mates (many of whom should not, strictly, been allowed into the wild). We did, and I have to admit, we did do a fucking good job at it.  We tested.  We tweaked. 

BY GOD WE TINKERED. 

More to the point, we went on a lot of trips to California to look at the latest technology. A lot of trips.  Trips on which staggering quantities of alcohol were consumed; expense budgets were blown; stories were broken over beers at 4am; CEOs of major companies were outraged at British tarts questioning their policy on abuses of human rights in Communist States.  And, hell's bells, we did it well.

YES.

I hobnobbed with the brightest and the best.  Me and Anand?

We had a beer or two.  Me and Dave?

Yeah, we shared some benchmarking thoughts over crisps in the press room at IDF.  Joel to the J? OK, we never met but I did have a total man-crush on him from afar.

WHAT?

Let me make one thing pretty clear. The title of this post is "My Dream PC". That's what Asus and Intel asked me to write about. I'm getting there, so bear with me.  Just hold fire.  What I am doing (in case you have the

ATTENTION SPAN OF A DIGG READER

and have somehow ended up here via a yellow link titled "Hysterical crazy British clown makes bum-fluff retard of himself w/ [PICS!]"), is setting up the background to My Dream PC. 

THE CONTEXT.

Because, you see, back in those days, back in those days where people would ask me my opinion about the latest technology

AND THEY WOULD DAMN WELL LISTEN.

Well, I actually owned My Dream PC.  I owned it.  Mine. All mine.

I had a PC on my desk, and she was the only PC I'd ever wanted.  At the time, she seemed like the only PC I ever could want.  My dream PC.  She was beautiful.

It was the summer of '69, and she was only 17.  Time passes, memories fade.  It's the tragedy of the human condition.

No.  Wait.  It was the summer of 2005, actually, and she was only about 2 months old I think. I can't remember the details, but I do remember that she played Company of Heroes at 1920x1200 on full details.  Stunning.

I'm pretty sure she had two graphics cards in some form of SLI tucked away in there,  like

THROBBING HOT DUAL ZONES OF UNBRIDLED PLEASURE.

She had the fastest dual-core CPU, in the days when quad-core was just a lusty little glint in Pat Gelsinger's slightly beady eyes.  She had a great body, clothed in sleek aluminium, even a few little neon lights, because bling was still cool at the time.  She was, I'm pretty sure, the fastest goer in the office.  She may have been the fastest goer in the whole south-east of England.  She was certainly faster than anything those farts at Hexus could come up with.

Well, I should cut a long story short.  (Not that short, admittedly).  I started to get the itch.  You know, the one that says...

MOVE ON. 

Do something new.  Get someone new.  You need a younger model, heck, you deserve a younger model.  Ditch the neon, the bling, go for a blonde.  A curvaceous little thing with a tight little OS build. There's no shame in it.  Just a lot of great nights.

SO I DID.

To my shame, I left Bethany (for it was she) on my desk in my office and I walked out on her, one night, into the world. Left her there, wheezing at the betrayal. I held up my head, breathed in the fresh air in the world, the big wide world, where the clock frequency of your DDR means

LITERALLY NOTHING. 

Yes, folks, I got a job in mainstream journalism.

I started a men's interest magazine online.  You can go and see it if you want.  It's called ChannelFlip. 

Anyway, the point of this paragraph is not to plug ChannelFlip (although you should really go and have a look.  It's awesome).  No, the point is that when you step out of the great big e-penis competition of the technology world, one of the things that happens is that your tastes change.  Bethany - pulsating, powerful, roaring Bethany - starts to look a little fat, a little ugly.  Like maybe she has a few extra pounds piling on around the rear exhaust.

So when all you want is something thinner, sexier, hotter, sleeker, then there's only one thing you can do. 

YOU BUY A MAC.

You take the ridicule, sure.  Maybe you still have some friends in the tech world.  They can't understand how you'd trade 2GB of graphics RAM and vertex shaders up the wazoo for integrated graphics and a 13" screen.  But then you point out that, in the mainstream world, nobody uses their computers for anything other than email, Word, MP3s, FaceBook and PornHub.  And suddenly it all begins to make sense.

And so that's where I end up, where I find myself today.  Despite my change in tastes, I wouldn't say I own my dream computer, any maybe that's karma for you.

But I have something pretty close, and she's my MacBook Air.  And she does my email, Word, MP3, FaceBook and PornHub.

(She doesn't do MySpace.  Nobody with any self-respect does MySpace). 

Her name is Charlotte. Charlotte.  The very name evokes blonde curls, English-upper-lip-barely-contained-lust and sleek, curvacious lines. She's so beautiful, I practically need Ray-Bans just to sit at the keyboard. 

THANKFULLY I HAVE RAY-BANS.

She might not have much, you know, up top.  I wouldn't ever say that she was the smartest chick on the block.  Ask her to plough through a massive Excel spreadsheet and she'll look back at you with a vacant stare, twirling a beach ball between her sexy little fingers.  And forget about gaming.  Charlotte doesn't like to game. 

But by God.  Walk down the street with her on your arm, sit on a train with her next to you, and you'll enjoy the envious glances.  The looks.  The older gents, looking lustily at her svelte, tight, hot bod.  The designer outfit.  Built in California.  Designed by an Englishman, of course.  It makes it all worthwhile. 

Does that make me vain?  Maybe.  I prefer to think of it as self-depracating, verging on arrogant.

Bethany, I'm sure, is sitting in a coke-addled mess in a nightclub toilet, desperate to be young again, yearning for the days when she was where it was at, when she was the cool girl.  I'm sorry Bethany.  We grew apart.  I needed to move on.  Maybe...

MAYBE YOU COULD GET SSD IMPLANTS?

I hear they knocks years off.  Charlotte has natural SSDs, they came pre-installed - but I guess not everyone can be as fortunate. 

SO HERE IS MY QUESTION TO YOU, READER.

Yes, both of you that have made it to the bottom of this soliloquy. 

What's the greatest PC you ever walked out on?  What was your biggest regret? Have you ever sobbed your way through an NTFS re-format?

If you could go back in time and have one more night of unbridled passion with one machine from your past, which would it be?  The chunky 486 that had DOS appeal?  Your little Dell from the early 90s that always treated you right?  I want to know. 

TELL ME.