The White Label Computer Tower

Back in the 1970’s, Johnny Cash had a hit song called “One Piece at a Time,” the story of which involves him smuggling parts out of a General Motors factory to build his own car – only because it took so long to smuggle every part, all the parts didn’t fit together when he tried to build the final product.  Fun song.

It’s similar to my describing my personal desktop computer system – if someone were to ask its make and model – I could only say that it’s a custom built white label tower.

In other words, it’s not an HP, it’s not a Sony, and dude I didn’t get a Dell.  I purchased all the parts – motherboard, memory, two hard disc drives and and the necessary software – online through a service called newegg.com, while the tower – a Thermaltake “Shark” chassis – was purchased on sale at CompUSA.  Remember CompUSA?

I also purchased the necessary software packages – Windows Vista, MS Office, Corel Draw, etc. – through newegg as well.  Then I had a friend install and assemble everything.  That was three years ago.

So what I DO have is a fully customizable computer system, and if anything needs repair or replacement, it can be effectuated simply and efficiently.

Which is what happened last week.  After three years, one of my two hard drives (my main programs are on the “C” drive, but most of my files and data are on a designated “B” drive) started to produce error messages.  Since both drives were approximately 350 GB apiece, and were probably straining to their last revolutions, I purchased two replacement 1TB drives, and hired someone to replace and clone both drives.  Everything works fine, and I didn’t lose any data or the like.

I gotta tell you, my white label tower is without a doubt the most dependable computer I’ve ever had.  And I’ve worked with computers going all the way back to my college days.  Now when I say “back in the day,” I’m talking about computers like the TERAK 8510/a with its big 8-inch floppy drive that held about 25 pages of text per disc.  The college also had an IBM PC XT with WordStar word processing software, some Apple IIe computers with VisiCalc on them, and an early Apple Macintosh – I think it was a 128K model.

In fact, my first post-college personal computer that wasn’t loaned to me by someone else – one that I purchased with my own coinage – was a monochrome-screened Packard Bell 386 laptop with Windows 3.1 loaded on it.  It worked well enough for the time, but it had a serious charging problem, and when somebody borrowed the laptop and actually bent the power plug connector to the point where I couldn’t plug the laptop into the power cord, I tried to have the laptop returned and repaired.

So I took it back to the place where it was purchased.

Oh, did I mention that was Sears?

Oh, and did I mention that the laptop sat in a warehouse for three weeks and was returned to me unrepaired?

So after that, I contacted the manufacturer of the laptop, Packard Bell.  They said to send the laptop to a certain address and it would be repaired.

I sent the laptop to the address.

I never saw the laptop again.

THREE MONTHS LATER, I got a call from Packard Bell asking what I thought of the customer service regarding the laptop.

After I vented to Packard Bell about their crappy customer service, they told me that they would make things right.

A week later, I received a Pentium desktop computer from Packard Bell.

Although I think the Pentium computer was a few revolutions slower than my 386, I used it for about six months – until it also started freaking out on me.

My next two computers came from CompUSA, and were both HP towers.  Unfortunately, neither desktop were fully upgradable, and any attempts to add peripherals or increase the productivity of the desktops were met with several appearances of the dreaded blue screen o’ death.

So by 2007, I finally gave up on brand-name computers, and chose instead to build my own customizable tower, to have everything I wanted in the way I specifically wanted it.  I needed flexibility and backwards compatibility.  I wanted to be able to slap in a TEAC 5 1/4″ floppy drive if I ever needed to transfer legacy software or files.  I needed the ability to add an Iomega ZIP drive (I eventually acquired one of those, especially a good one with USB connectivity).  I wanted a decent sound card so that I could import music from my vinyl record collection. And I wanted to add my Minolta ScanDual IV film scanner to the mix as well.

In other words, this needed to be MY computer.  Not someone else’s interpretation of what my computer was supposed to be.  That’s why it’s called a “personal computer.”

Around that same time period, though, I purchased my Sony VAIO laptop at a Best Buy Black Friday sale.  I use the Sony VAIO for writing and photography work on road trips, and it’s a dependable workhorse as well.

So when Black Friday rolls by this year, all I’m going to do is roll over in my bed, hit the snooze button on my alarm clock, and get a few extra blessed hours of sleep.  Let everybody else freeze their toes off in front of Best Buy to try to get a new computer.  At least I don’t have to re-install all the programs and re-register all the programs and re-this and re-that.

You understand where I’m coming from on this, don’t you?