Most of the people that work on IT websites also have the distinction of working in the real world IT department. Even I have such the honor to work in such a field. Although still an undergraduate student, I have the honor of serving a Wisconsin State University as a soon-to-be server administrator for the servers overlooking the computer labs. Although that will be my main job, I will have other miscellaneous duties I will not discuss for fear of being called a slave.
It just so happens that I work with a large crew of undergrad students right now. It’s around 15, and among us are a wide range of minds and personalities. We have the HR guys, the Mac guys (one of which can’t even install Mac OS X properly…yet I somehow can…), and use PC guys. We also have a group of three undergrads that do the hardware work. Their work entails keeping the mice and keyboards clean as well as fixing any hardware issues that arise such as messed up disk drives, bad memory…anything else that’s inside the case. They are a diverse group of fellas; one is from Saudi Arabia, another is of Asian decent, and the third if a former high school jock turned hardcore geek. He is by far older than I as he is returned to the UW system to get is Information System degree, after receiving a B.A. degree a few years back.
Keep in mind that he is a “hardware guy” because that fact comes in very important in the upcoming story. He recently informed me that he is going to be purchasing a computer. That’s right, not building, but purchasing. It took me quite a good deal of time to pick my lower jaw back up from the ground. After that, I proceeded to drill him with the usual questions: “Are you an idiot?”, “How can you do such a thing?”, “Have you no shame?” His answers were: “No”, “I have no time to build my own.”, “No, I have no shame.” I finally broke down and had to ask him just what he was getting. For an educated hardware guy, there are really only two choices if you are low enough to buy instead of build: Compaq with AMD Athlon and SDRAM, or Compaq with AMD Athlon and DDR SDRAM.
His response was one of fierce debate between him and I: “1.5GHz Pentium 4 with PC800 RDRAM from Dell.” My experience with Dell was all but good, as mass purchase of Pentium !!! computers resulted in about a 10% RMA rate on parts, mostly floppy and ZIP drives. You should all know by now my feelings about the P4 and Rambus. You can get much more power for your dollar with a 1.33GHz AMD Athlon and PC133 SDRAM. As I started to explain this to him, it was obvious that he knew little of the finer dynamics of purchasing a PC. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great guy and can fix them with the best of them, but when it comes to buying them, it seems that the evil Blue Man Group has got him in a trance. After talking with him about the benefits of AMD, he was obvious that he thought RDRAM was much better than SDRAM just because of the bigger numbers (marketing scheme), as well as that infamous GHz number.
After my hardest attempt, he has still settled with Intel. I must give my respect to Intel for running such a machine that is an advertising heavyweight, but I must also find Intel and spit upon them for the lies they tell just to get ahead. It has recently become obvious to me that this world is nothing but a big lie thanks to recent events in my personal life over the past six months to year. Because I’m feeling really stupid right now, I will make a feeble attempt at becoming smarter by writing something profound in french. I suggest you read it and take it to heart because it is very true:
Ceux qui indiquent la vérité peuvent avoir une route dure à marcher, mais qui la route mène à peu de nuits sans le sommeil et le bonheur pour toujours à la fin.
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