I don’t like to think about it, but the death of my PC could have ended much more tragically. Waking up and discovering that I may have lost all of my data, I progressed through each of the 5 stages of grief. At first, I tried to deny that there was a problem, then I got angry at myself for not listening to Thomas Hawk’s advice, this was followed by plenty of promises to be more diligent, if I could only figure out how to repair the computer, and when I ultimately realized it was toast, depression set in over my loss. Eventually, realizing my problems had nothing to do with my data, acceptance was easy — it meant that I was going to transfer my digital life into an entirely new media experience.
Three years ago, I made the mistake of buying a computer from my employer. They had extra units lying around and I liked the idea of having Microsoft Office pre-installed. The computer was old, but still an upgrade over my Windows 98 PC. At first it seemed like this a good solution but, what I didn’t realize, was that all the media-related functionality had been stripped from the machine. It ran on just a half a gig of RAM, had no CD or DVD burner, the video card couldn’t support higher resolutions, and somehow they managed to disable the microphone.
As a media nut, this was a brutal mistake to make for the home PC. So when it came time to get a new machine, I wanted to make sure that I kept all my functionality options open – such as handling PC gaming and streaming digital video well.
