At this very moment I am using my beloved Compaq Presario 7595 Super Ultra Deluxe Desktop Extravaganza Computer with Device Action. I got it in summer 2000 partly with my own funds and partly as a high school graduation present. I bought it preassembled at Costco, along with a printer. The computer itself is nearly four years old, which at the speed of technological innovation in the industry is toward the end of its useful life. And, indeed, sometimes it has trouble with this or that. But overall, it has been reliable and a joy to have. I really don’t know what people did before PCs were commonplace. I guess they were all trying to figure out what was missing in their lives.
Inside the tower I’ve got the original Pentium III 650 MHz processor, which is ever so slowly losing ground to the minimum recommended specs for today’s latest and greatest applications. Sometimes when the ol’ processor feels a bit over the hill, I load up Solitaire and it runs that like a breeze. The only problem is that I’m really not all that fond of solitaire.
On the active memory side, I had 128 MB DDR ram originally, nice stuff, too—top of the line at the time. Last year I added another 256, for a total of 384. The only trouble is that Windows 98 SE doesn’t really know how to optimize all that extra power, and the upgrade barely shows.
So far as hard memory goes, I originally had what I believe was a 30 GB hard drive, possibly 20 GB. Two years ago it cracked, costing me a lot of stored data. But just when the world was at its darkest, a kind and holy relative of mine, blessed be he, was ever so beneficent as to buy me a new hard drive. The world was raised up, the sun shone bright, and all was well again. It’s a good disk, too. I want to say it’s 80 GB, but it tells me it’s only got 60 GB. The cycle rate is 7200, naturally, but for the life of me I cannot remember if it’s a Maxtor or a Western Digital. Anyhow, nowadays this drive is as old as was the original when it perished. I hope this one has got more stamina. I named it Silence, after a character in one of my novels, because Silence is tough and won’t take shit from anyone, even if it’s coming at her at 7200 RPM, and also because the drive really is silent compared to the painful whirring of the last drive in the throes of death. After two years of use my trusty Silence makes a bit more noise than it used to, and so does the hard circuitry on the motherboard, but so far things are still looking pretty decent.
I’ve got a DVD/CD-ROM drive that makes such a ruckus when I use it that I’ve simply stopped using it, and a separate CD-RW drive that I use for matters relating to RW. I also have a floppy disk drive that, to my knowledge, I have not used in over a year.
Right now I am staring at my Compaq MV720 CRT 17-inch monitor. It has served me well from day one. On top of it is a Logitech webcam that I got as a present over two years ago, and is really beginning to show its age. Beneath my fingers is a smashing Compaq keyboard—remember that I got the whole thing in a preassembled bundle of Compaq-Costco goodness. It’s in QWERTY arrangement, of course, because I type at the speed of business (ha!) and I’m also fond of the strong preference it shows for the left hand, which by all impartial and scientific accounts is the superior hand in every manner and aspect. To my left is a Logitech optical mouse that I bought either early this year or late last, finally freeing myself from the need to clean my mouse ball every week. The old mouse just didn’t like being fondled down there, ya know? Both the old one and the new have the handy scrolling wheel that has taken my life from unlivable to utopian.
Bleating against the walls of this humble abode is the Chrono Trigger piece “People Who Threw Away the Will to Live,” now at a stunning 150’31” on ZD-spc, generated inside a fabulous (and quite ordinary) pair of JBL desktop speakers.
My printer is an HP DeskJet 930C. I’d just like to take this opportunity to say, long live Carly Fiorina, and long may she reign over the HP Empire. She’s done an outstanding job with the company.
Also inside the tower I’ve got my groovy Ethernet card, and a TV card that never worked—which played a role in the fact that in the past three-and-a-half years I have watched less than one day’s worth of television. Next to those is a fan that presumably is keeping the whole works from melting right here on the spot. My sound and graphics cards are both suboptimal, indeed they were but average fare on the day I bought the computer, so you can bet that buy now they’re out of date. This has made my music composition particularly frustrating, as I’ve got MIDI problems of every sort. And as for running ultra-high-graphics apps, you can forget about ‘em. I’ve got plenty of empty slots and ports, and I think there’s a Sun Stone in there somewhere, too. Either that or it’s plugged into the mains (yawn).
And so, gentle reader, concludes my rambling discourse as to the innards and outards of my beloved Compaq Presario 7595 Super Ultra Deluxe Desktop Extravaganza Computer with Device Action. I hope I haven’t left out anything important, such as the nifty lamp sitting atop the tower. God, I love that lamp.
~ Josh
