Thesis Statement. I hope not to offend any technophiles in my readership, if such things exist, by which I mean my readership. Sure, I might be called a hypocrite by some, who might have read my column last year praising my iMac in all its glory. Well, I was just a foolish kid then. Now I have been enlightened: all computers suck. Windows, Mac, LINUX, UNIX, SUFFIX, CRUCIFIX, all of 'em.
Evidence 1. Obsoletion and the upgrade. These days, as soon as you hand over your hard-earned cash to the grinning devil's tool of a computer salesman, your newly-purchased baby will become as obsolete as the 8-track. Listen closely next time you purchase a computer; if you do so, you will be rewarded by the wet sucking sound of your dollar bills going down the kitchen disposal. Think you've got them beat with 450 MHz? Well, how about 500 MHz? My friend Dana thought he was ahead of the pack with his 600 MHz monster, dubbed "SuperMachine." However, now Gateway with their cutesy cow computers have 650 MHz as standard issue. Now, if all this business about the difference between megahertz (megahertzes?) was only about keeping up with the proverbial Joneses, then we would have little to worry about except for bruised egos and a little processor-envy, wink wink. The problem is that everything keeps surging ahead, software, hardware, and otherwise, and in a couple of years your prized 650 MHz-equipped showdog won't even be able to run screen savers at optimum speed. (For those of you who are under-knowledged in the computer business, "screen savers" are little men in your computer that eat the lint that might otherwise stick to your computer screen. Helpful little guys, eh?) In the end, the only thing that megahertz is your cash flow. When you get behind, you might think that a clever alternative to buying a whole new computer is to upgrade, but here too, you will get shafted, because here too, as soon as the additional RAM or MHz or GB or washer/dryer combo is installed in your system by technicians with barely concealed smirks, the wet sucking sound will commence, and Microsoft will introduce its new, improved, hydraulically-powered model. Your upgraded baby will have rejoined the legions of the 8-track.
Evidence 2. The crash. How many times have you been hard at work on a paper or porn download when suddenly, your machine has a stroke and your efforts are for naught? I used to think that this was a problem native only to Windows-based machines, and I cursed Bill Gates mightily with invocations of toe fungus and cracked glasses. However, during my time here at "dear old" Dartmouth, I have discovered that Macs, too, are prone to the same type of irritating problems. Ask anyone who has an iMac: they can show you the paperclip that they have to use in the side of their computer in case of a system freeze. For, you see, iMacs have no simple "power" button. They were initially designed by brainless idiots with a fetish for Bondi Blue. The crashes I have mentioned can be triggered by someone doing something so brash as running Word and an internet browser at the same time (the scoundrel!), or even if you look at the computer wrong. I have been witness to bizarre events. On one occasion, a paper I was working on was retitled with the name of an MP3 when I saved the document. Have you ever tried to pass in a paper on metaphysical poetry with the title "Jimi Hendrix- All Along the Watchtower"? It just doesn't fly with professors.
Evidence 3. The conspiracy. Sometimes I think that no humans really know how computers work on the inside, and that computers are being built and serviced by secret aliens. The humans are just pretending, acting as puppets for their extraterrestrial comrades. Have you ever been able to get a straight answer about what's wrong with your computer when you ask a help-desk person? I think that "help-desk" is an absurd, entirely inaccurate term. In the off-chance that one of the people DOES decide to give in and ask their secret alien how to fix the problem, they will return to you and deliver their answer in the snottiest tone possible. "Well, 'sir,' your CPU is obviously having issues with its motherboard, and if it has a babyboard, the motherboard will be mellowed by grandmotherboardhood. This is something a child can see. You are a moron and should not be allowed to breathe the same air that computers do." And on another note, I have personally seen my cousin build a computer, so he is an alien. Not so secret anymore, eh cuz?
Conclusion. Computers bite the big one in the sky.
