I have friends who like to pretend that they know something
about computers, but the second something goes wrong, they get all in a tizzy.
I believe, based on my observations of these silly people I call my friends,
that the slow pc is perhaps
the most frustrating situation for many of them. Though these relatively
intelligent people are able to understand the various potential causes of a
slow computer, very few of them can actually tolerate the issue emotionally.
They have been known to do some very odd things in response to this very basic
computer problem; things that offer nothing in terms of a solution to the
problem and that, if anything, only serve to make matters worse.
One of my friends actually threw her computer out of her
apartment. I know there are ads on TV about people doing this sort of thing,
but my friend, in a fit of rage actually chucked her PC off the terrace. The
appalling thing about it was that she narrowly missed hitting a dog and
decapitating him with her laptop. The reason why I find this story to be
important as well as fascinating is that it exemplifies the power that the
average PC has over our emotional status. A slow computer can cause a person to
stop thinking rationally and do things that they would regard as inappropriate.
My friend was not stupid or even inconsiderate. Indeed, she is a dog-lover. But
she had simply had it with her slow-moving laptop.
Another friend I know beat his computer with a stick. This
situation took place a number of years ago before the advent of a lot of the
newer technologies that make it easy to maintain a computer that runs fast.
But, needless to say, the act was somewhat shocking. Computers cost more at the
time when he was abusing his with a tree branch and I recall the group of
people who knew about it weren’t sure what to say or to think. Again, however,
this was a situation in which the computer was running slow. It wasn’t that my
friend thought that a slow computer would respond to a good beating, he just
couldn’t take it anymore. I remember some people in my group thinking that he
had gone easy on the machine after it lost some of his data and did some other
inappropriate behaviors. They said he should have wacked it with a two-by-four.
A slow computer is nothing to sneeze at. I actually have
theories that slow computers cause family problems and contribute to animal and
child abuse. A slow computer fix that’s dragging itself along often starts to slow down
in increments that aren’t always terribly noticeable. A person can habituate to this sort of slow
slow-down and fail to even realize what’s happening until they’ve been
thoroughly sucked into the reality of slow-motion. If your computer is running
slowly and you’ve just realized that it’s frustrating you, take some time to do
troubleshooting. Don’t throw your computer out the window or beat it with a
stick. Fixing a slow computer is usually fairly simple and rational and takes
only a miniscule amount of time.
