techrecovery | Apr. 8th, 2003

A woman calls up to tell me her computer has "cratered." I ask what it's doing or not doing. Her response: the dreaded "It just won't work" and "I don't know anything about computers."

Finally beat it out of her that the machine will not load Windows and is making an odd clickety-clickety noise. Bad hard drive. Swell.

Now comes the obligatory "can you save my data" beg-and-plead session. I tell her it doesn't look good (and sure enough, the drive was so badly hosed we couldn't get anything off it once it came in).

All of this is all well and good, though the call has gone on just long enough to make me want to bang my head on the parts locker. She then asks me what brand of computer I would recommend if hers has gone to the great LAN in the sky.

"Well," I said, "I'd have one built."

"......I don't understand."

I blinked. Those were all small and non-technical words. "I'd, uh. have a computer built."

"I don't understand that term. I don't know computers."

Cue the O_O face. "You know...build one. You get individual parts and have someone put them together to make a computer." Now I was sure I'd get reamed for being a smartass on that one.

But no! The light dawned on the luser! "Ohhhh! I see!"

So, in came the computer. Not only did it have, yes, a dead hard drive, the power supply was going south. And this was a Compaq. An old one. And it didn't like the hard drive I was trying to feed it. I finally called these folks and told them they'd be better off getting a new computer.

The lady gushed over how much she appreciated my honesty and [sniff] told me when they [sob] get a new computer, they'll BRING IT TO US. WAAAAAAH.