What has caused me great stress this weekend was the untimely demise of my oldest desktop PC. I first bought that rig back in 2003 and up until last Thursday, it has given me more than the value of the money spent on it. Five solid years of good computing was given to me by that old desktop. Back then, it was the top-of-the-line with 512MB of RAM, an 80 GB hard drive, an NVidia GeForce 4 graphics card powered by a 2 GHz Pentium 4 processor. It was even run by a genuine Windows XP Home Edition.

Of course its five year existence was not without any hiccups, downtimes or hard drive crashes. The fact that I’m too much of a geek to troubleshoot it myself saved us a lot of service fees and really used up its parts and services warranties to the last day of eligibility. It wasn’t a kick-ass PC but it got the job done.

On it, I finished many games like the Call of Duty series, Star Wars: KOTOR, Formula 1, and FIFA games. And how can I forget the Ragnarok days, long nights of Gunbound matches and engagements in RF Online. My first blog was started up on that machine back when I was still using dial-up prepaid cards by Pacific Internet’s SurfMAXX brand.

I burned many CDs movies and music alike. It was my make-shift sound studio used for recording and re-mixing music for the many theatrical productions I’ve been part of this past years. Lots of school paper, albeit way overdue ones, were written on that PC. Of course, gigabytes of Naruto anime episodes, TV series, MP3s, movies and torrents were downloaded and stored using that old PC. I do confess that included porn. Nonetheless, that PC served our family for many many years.

Before I got to own my very first laptop, it was my second love. If I have nothing to do outdoors, I’d be locked up inside my room, online and playing games most of my waking hours of the day. My mother would always remind me that I spend way too much time on the computer I forget to take my meals or do my laundry. A statement I hugely contest.

Good old times were indeed made possible thanks to that old desktop. Now, all I have are those memories every time I get to see its old, worn out chassis. The only surviving part that continues to be of any good use is its 80GB Seagate hard drive which now serves as a backup device for my laptop. A proud legacy I suppose of a machine that was well built and well maintained given the years of abuse and repairs it went through.

Now, I look forward to the next purchase of a new desktop. Just fifteen days to go and I’ll be  out there again, looking for good and worthy replacement for my old desktop.

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While waiting for some official announcement or news as to whether classes in the tertiary level would be suspended tomorrow, I chanced upon this short story about Samsung pondering on the idea of opening a factory here in the Philippines.

“As far as I know, Samsung Electronics and the Philippine government are talking about the plan. However, some technical issues still remain before a final decision,” a source at Samsung told The Korea Times.

The source said the company would “announce via a regulatory filing if any concrete decision comes out,” the newspaper reported.

Philippine government officials have been talking with Samsung about constructing a plant to make integrated circuitry for chips in the Clark Special Economic Zone north of Manila in the Philippines, the report said.

In Clark eh? That’s where Hanjin, also a Koren firm, is based locally but has been in some hot water of late because of some serious string of on-site accidents claiming the lives of its workers. Tsk tsk tsk.

Going back, it seems that Korean firms are much more inclined to setup shop north of Manila, while Chinese and Japanese firms are more akin to opening theirs south of Manila like in the economic processing zones of Cavite, Laguna and Batangas. Just as observation though.

If Samsung does setup a factory in the country, would it make Samsung products a bit more affordable? I’m not keen on their mobile phones but one of the top toys in my wish-list is their hi-def LCD TVs. Just sharing some wishful thoughts here.

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