Before I get on to the main point, a bit of history, well my history. Since the age of 6 we’ve had a PC here, one that generally has gone through a replacement every 2 years, and each time it has been quite a bit of a significant upgrade. The first computer had a “very powerful” (for the time) Pentium 133MHz processor with a “MASSIVE” 16MB of RAM (factory upgraded from 8MB, quite a nice upgrade at the time) and everything was fine. It was acceptably fast, and as i remember, was characterised by the sound of the floppy and hard drive that ran in there. The amazingly massive 1.2GB of storage, something you’d never fill up. That was replaced with a new machine with an AMD 300MHz processor in 1998, I can’t remember how much RAM and a 6GB hard drive, which was a massive upgrade across 2 years, I actually even needed to use partitions at the time, due to the limitation of 2GB partitions under FAT. That was my main machine for a couple of years, 4 even maybe until being replaced with a 1800MHz P4 with 256MB RAM and a 40GB hard drive, still a massive upgrade for the time.

That was the past, this is now. I currently use a 2530MHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM and depending on what’s in there at any time, somewhere between 500GB and 3000GB storage. I built this machine in 2008 and the only changes have been the hard drives, as my capacity has grown and then moving the drives off into a different machine better suited to serving files. It is now 2011, approximately 3 years after building the machine, it is usually now that I start looking at what it’s replacement will be.

So lets look at PC technology over the past three years, I could move from a Core 2 Duo to maybe a Core i5, or even a Core i7, that would provide a speed upgrade, of course that’s just the Intel side, there is also the AMD side of the same fence, mid-high range systems would give a speed upgrade. As for RAM, the standard is either 6/12GB with a i7 or 4-8 with others so we’ll take that, and I’m happy with my disk capacity so we’ll leave it at that. I use my current PC mainly for gaming so I’ll add a graphics card to that. And for the sake of not doing too much maths (as the price changes all the time), we’ll assume it comes to £something.

So what do I really get for my money in 2011? A small upgrade speed compared to my current setup (compared to upgrades of the past), and more RAM, but what for? I have plenty already. As for the graphics update, I don’t really see anything being that over-taxing on my current system, so that’s a useless upgrade. Beginning to notice a trend? None of these updates are really worth getting, in fact in my (possibly bigoted) opinion, I haven’t seen an update in the past 3 three years to the PC space that’s been really worth it. Maybe solid state drives somewhat, but they are far too expensive for their capacity at the moment. It is this that I think is the issue with PCs these days, it has reached a point where it has matured and is at a stage that is “good enough”, and while that is good for most everyone, it has made the space boring, no really exciting developments, nothing really taxing a machine to make it worth getting an upgrade in the near future.

Now back to the point I brought up in the title, why I might not build a PC again. Put bluntly, there’s no point. Why put in the effort when for little to no cost difference I can just buy a PC that does what I want? Ok, so its “tradition” to build your own PC, especially in the gaming space, but really what’s the point? Where is the real benefit? It is also clear that the PC space is changing, the gaming space is changing, the technological world as we know it is changing. I sometimes like to make predictions for what we shall see in the few years ahead, I will write that soon, most will be clear why I think that, some maybe a little far out, but we shall see. But for now, this PC I am writing on will likely stay my PC for a long time, or at least until I change form factor.

The first of these comes from “NevyZelry” who decided to advertise its services to me in my post “Finished Computer Photos“. NevyZelry said:

hello, cute web site
the simple way to create blog posts who smash in your visitors:
link removed

Now that sounds like a good offer, a simple way to butcher my readers to death, oh yes please!

The next came from someone who called themself “WP Themes“, and this was posted to my post, “My Blog“. They wrote:

Amiable brief and this enter helped me alot in my college assignement. Gratefulness you for your information.

Awesome! A coming soon message has helped people in college assignments. Personally, I don’t see how the words “Returning soon…” could do such a thing, but hey, all for the greater good, right?

“Robes” also had something to say about this post.

awesome article.

Why thank you, two word comments about a two word post is just what I needed, thanks.

This comment came from someone named “wrmachine“, posted to the Big Tag Sphere that I added because Harry wanted to see how it works:

I read about it some days ago in another blog and the main things that you mention here are very similar

Poor marks for correct spelling and grammar, however as it’s just a standard WordPress Plugin, and all I wrote basically was “Here it is”, yes I can imagine it’s pretty standard. Thanks for writing in.

This comment was quite confusing, it seemed to have nothing to do with the blog post (even when compared to the others), but “MackLee31” still wanted to share his comments, so here you go, posting in “A tale of a laptop (and Windows 7) Part 1“:

This is cool that we can take the loans and this opens completely new chances.

Yes, I agree completely, a new OS does open up new chances for a device. However no loans are needed for Windows 7, so do not fret MackLee31, you can buy Windows 7 quite reasonably without taking out yet another loan. The laptop on the other hand, well… it all depends on which laptop you want.

A different user however suggested that I buy Viagra in their name. But that’s not very interesting, their comment on the other hand… in the post “Modifying the Nexus One: Custom Keyboards“, they wrote….

I read blogs on a similar topic, but i never visited your blog. I added it to favorites and i’ll be your constant reader.

I would just like to say thank you for becoming yet another bot reader, plenty of bots trawl this site looking to leave spam comments, but as you’re such a constant reader that had bookmarked me, you’ve ranked yourself high in terms of spam, you should feel proud.

The last piece of spam, from user “soggalimask“, decided to comment probably just based on the post title, “Some sort of uber epic catchup thing“:

I do think this is a most incredible website for proclaiming great wonders of Our God!

Thank you. No, really. Thank you. I didn’t realise you thought of me as your God, or maybe you’re just talking about my robots. I’m glad you liked the post and I’m sure I will make more posts about the God that I am. Or something like that?

That’s the end of the comments, 7 spam comments dissected, because I thought they were comical when against the posts they were in. Hopefully some more bots will post comments here and then soon enough, there will be more comment dissections in the near future. But until then, I hope you enjoyed this disassembly of bot commenting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ95z6ywcBY

Edit: Thanks to Skillers of Techious, which in this thread (also people in a CnC forum thread) pointed out the other references that I should have noticed. So it seems that all these references are becoming more and more common.

If Infinity = Infinity
and Infinity+1 = Infinity
and 0-Infinity = -Infinity
What is Infinity-Infinity?

Answers in the comments please.

Is this Tiberium at the bottom of the image?

Note: Sorry to the people at Sure, I don’t mean to pull your products apart

Edit: Here’s a link about Tiberium on Wikipedia for those who don’t know. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberium