My computer is dying.  A slow and painful death.

It hums.  It moans.  It groans.  It hisses.

It gurgles at me.

Apparently this is the sound of a laptop’s motherboard and hard drive simultaneously giving up.

I’ve had this HP Pavilion since August 03, the summer before I left for college.  It’s survived.  I used it for three and half years of school, during which I’m sure a few droplets of a Malibu Baybreeze here or there caressed it’s insides.  I ferried it back and forth to the city when my job demanded it of me.  It survived countless moves from CT back to NY for vacations or residency changes.  It was the little engine that could.

This computer has always been on the verge of death.  I don’t know how many times David has reformatted this thing and slowly brought it back from the grave.  I’ve had to send it back to HP in the middle of the semester my junior year so they could tinker with, never mind how many papers I’ve lost because hey, maybe it will just turn off mid-sentence.  I’ve brought it to computer centers, and even those morons from Best Buy’s Geek Squad have had the pleasure of trying to resuscitate this thing.

Oh, how nice.  As I type this I hear and feel this machine struggling with life.  It’s as though a rumble pack is attached to it.

My CD drive is completely broken.  It’s missing essential programs and system operations.  The fans don’t work so I use a cooling pad underneath it.  The screen can’t be lowered, and the mechanism that dims the monitor had to be turned off since it would spaz out and go to black.  I’ve seen the blue screen of death numerous times in the past two years.  Some days the internet access slows down so much that everything constantly times out.  I can’t access the button functions on the side to control the volume.  It’s eaten through a pair of speakers.  Sometimes it decides to disable my security programs and all of my USB ports are loose.

Did I mention the gurgling?

HP as a brand and in terms of durability isn’t totally worthless, but their customer service, troubleshooting and warranties all are. However this laptop has definitely prevailed where other better treated and maintained machines have crumbled. Seriously, I have never taken good care of it.

The advice that David has given me, that you should all follow as well, is BACK UP what is precious to you.  I’ve put most of the things I care about on my external hard drive already, and will continue to do so until my laptop officially expires.

Share with me the experience of my computer’s impending doom!  If my computer had an iPhone (or was a sentient being for that matter..) it would totally have the iDie app on it.  But unlike the zombies I love so much, when this thing dies again, I don’t think it be able to rise from it’s own digital ashes.

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