Every day I rush home from classes or work. Why? Just to sit in front of the computer for the rest of the day, until I finally go to bed and eventually to sleep. I waste a good portion of my life on the computer, as do most people my age and younger. I’m not obsessing over my MySpace page or whether or not my friends updated their Facebook accounts so I can see the shitty photographs they took of themselves the last time they hung out. I’m not following anybody’s Twitter, or feverishly keeping up to date on any blog. I’m not a part of any of that. What am I doing with my life? I’m just trying to use the computer to do what has become every day things for me: check my email, chat with online “friends,” download shit, listen to music, use Photoshop, organize files or perhaps watch a movie, documentary or show. Unfortunately, these everyday tasks have become the all-day, every-day tasks.

It takes my computer a good fifteen minutes to start up from the time I push the power button to the time it takes to load up everything and is ready to go. Clicking on the start menu takes about 3 to 5 seconds to come up. Once it’s up, and let’s say I want to go to All Programs tab, I drag the mouse over to it and it highlights. From this point, it can take anywhere from 5 seconds to a full minute to bring up the menu. Granted, it is three columns, but that shouldn’t make any difference.

If I want to see what programs I can add/delete from the control panel, it takes about five minutes to populate the list of programs it lists. I scroll down the list, noting that the biggest programs I have installed are Adobe Photoshop CS2, the software for my Fujifilm E900 digital camera and the software for my Zen Vision: M mp3 player (which only works when plugged in now). Judging from this list, I am left with zero leads as to why the computer runs so slow.

Clicking on the icons on the desktop, it may or may not highlight. The computer may or my not register the fact that I want to load a program. About 35% of the time, the computer can’t handle this simple task and for a brief moment, all the icons on the desktop disappear and then slowly reappear one at a time until they are all there again. Then it refreshes itself and I have to start over. Usually the second try works. Sometimes when that happens, the start menu bar disappears with it. Photoshop takes up to five minutes to load. Internet Explorer can take up to five minutes to load and bring up the home page. If it fails to bring up the home page, that means I can’t browse. I have to close out and let it load a second try. If I wish to click stop-so I don’t have to wait for the homepage to load-so I can start browsing before hand, it says “too fucking bad” and fails on me.

When I use Photoshop, I get a status bar for everything I want to do. If I want to adjust levels, I get a status bar so I know how long it will take to bring that window option up. If I want to resize an image, I again see the status bar. If the image I want to resize I want at 300dpi, the program will take a while and may freeze altogether. Using the tools from the panel on the left will delay when changing between them. Results will be seen after changes are made, not during. Ctrl-Z is by best friend. Finally when its time to save progress, I yet again get the pleasure of watching the status bar tell me how long it will take. When closing out I get to see my mouse cursor change into a sand timer as it closes.

When browsing the internet, things are typically fine, but of course slow. But if I want to make a new tab, it can take up to ten seconds to manifest. When typing in either the Google or Yahoo toolbar, it takes a few seconds to register, so if I type right away, it may only get the first letter and/or the last few letters, but never all of it. Most of the time I have to wait for it to catch up so it knows I want to type and can brace itself for that challenging task. If I decide I want to switch between my Yahoo messenger, Internet Explorer, Winamp, Windows Explorer and whatever else I so choose, the windows don’t appear right away as one would expect from a computer in the year 2009. Instead, I see ghosts of windows; their frames slowly peel into position as the rest of it struggles to keep up. Through the frames I can see the previous window I was just using. Sometimes the fact that I’m changing windows doesn’t register in the task bar until I click on the new window on the task bar. At least half the time when I’m waiting for the new window to form into view I think maybe it just needs one more click to get it over that hill, so I click. Nothing happens. I click again. Still nothing happens. I click a third time. This time I get the all familiar “(Not Responding)” message next to the text on top of the window. At this point I pull up my trusty Windows Task Manager, my second best friend; Ctrl+Alt+Del second to Ctrl-Z. The same thing happens in reverse. When I close a window, it doesn’t just disappear; it slowly peels away, leaving its remnants in the other windows it overlapped until it is completely gone. When scrolling in Yahoo messenger, there is a lag every single time.

Task Manager lets me know everything is running fairly smoothly, even though I can clearly see that it’s not. System Idle Process is always at 90% or above, typically hovering between 95% and 98%, Performance says it’s running anywhere from 5% to 30% at any given moment, with spikes of 90-100% from god-knows-what (typically from changing between programs). To this day I still don’t know what causes the System Idle Process to stay that high.

The problems continue. It slowly gets worse the longer the computer is on. At this point I think I should point out the system specs. It’s a Dell Inspiron 2200 laptop. The OS is Window’s XP Home Edition, Pentium M processor 1.70GHz, 593 MHz, 504 MB of RAM. The hard drive is 33.9 GB but only has no more than 9 GB free at any given time. I have an external 500 GB next to it to make up for it. I know it’s an old machine and that’s a big part of the problem. I’m convinced that the hardware is slowly melting down on me.

Even though all I’m doing with this thing is listening to music, browsing the internet, watching movies, and/or the occasional light Photoshop work, these are the things I have to put up with. Microsoft World and Excel are probably the only programs that run as they should. Writing this, I’m amazed that I spend day in and day out using it. I spend most of any given day on this computer. Not because I love using it so much, but because the act of using it takes up so much time.

(I’m going to school to be in an industry which is completely reliant on using high-end, high-powered computers: the video game industry. If I don’t get a job right out of school, there will be no way possible to keep up with practicing using programs like Photoshop, Maya and Zbrush. This computer will never be able to handle it, and I seriously doubt I will ever get enough money to buy a computer that can handle all that smoothly without a decent paying job. It’s just not possible.)

This begs the question “Why use it at all if it’s so much trouble?”

The short answer is, I don’t know. I have no idea why I use it so much, why it takes up so much of my waking life, why I let it. I have no idea. I could just ignore it. I could just keep it turned off. But I don’t. Mostly because the internet keeps me in the illusion of believing I’m connected to the world, that I’m a part of it all. Again a question arises. “If you know it’s a façade, why buy into it?” Why? Because I want to believe I’m leading a life that’s more important than it actually is. Like most people, I like to think I’m more beloved, envied, cherished and interesting than I really am. The computer helps my ego (sort of). That’s about it. At least that’s all I can come up with right now. I have never had the money to go out into the world and have a real social life, so I suppose this is the next best thing (and no, I don’t live in my parents basement or garage. I have my own apartment).

If I had a new computer that was up to date, with brand new hardware and software, then I could actually work on it. I could actually do things important (seemingly), and in turn I could really get that feeling I want to believe I’m getting now. But until that day comes, I’m left to deal with this machine that slowly but surely will melt down on me. Do I need a computer to get a feeling of self-worth? Of course not. But I would at least be able to advance my education and even perhaps jumpstart my career. One day I will push that power button and nothing will happen. It will be fucked, and so will I. Because that day will be the day I forgot to back up my shit.

- LucifersOrphEn