On March 31, I posted that I was back in the saddle, having experienced a significant problem with my desktop computer. I guess I should follow up and admit that I’ve been on my butt in the dust this whole time. The PC wasn’t fixed as I thought, after all.

A couple of days after replacing the hard drive, I began to experience problems starting or waking the PC when it had been off or in sleep mode for a while, It would freeze just as Windows began to start, and it might take multiple tries to boot up. Then it would run fine, until I shut down or allowed it to sleep again.

Two days ago, I pressed the power button on the tower. It lit, the computer began to hum, it went off, lit and hummed again, went off. It did this several times before I held the power button down to force shutdown. When I tried again, it booted OK.

So today the machine is in a repair shop. On the phone, the technician speculated I have a bad installation of software; a glitch in the drivers. But since the problem I described was happening well before Windows could even begin to try to load, and I had updated BIOS, I think the problem is with the motherboard.

[Sigh] The manuscript of my first chapbook was typed and mailed, and there are times when I long for the simplicity of those days. But then I wouldn’t be able to share this instantly with all of you. There is no doubt our newest technology is helpful, worth time and money to human society in general. It is bringing the world closer together. But I think the time has come for consumers to demand that people who make technology stand more firmly behind it. For at least 10 years.

The only explanation for failing hardware in a 3 year old PC is that it has a 1 year warranty. Computer companies know better than promise more, although they can make things to last when they try. The PC at the shop is a 2009 HP p6130f, quad core, 8GB of ram, 1000GB hard drive. Today I pulled from the closet a 2001 Dell Dimension 4300, 18GB hard drive, 384mb RAM. It’s 12 years old, so Dell would’ve done OK with a 10 year warranty. It runs very slowly, but it’ll get you down the road, without throwing you off in the weeds.