Couple Bonding Through PC Building

mikemuch writes "When his lovely girlfriend Glenda needed a new PC, Jason Cross, who spends much of the week assembling PCs with the latest gear to test for ExtremeTech, decided he would let her build it herself. She gave him her list of needs, he came up with a part list, and then watched as she did all the screwdriver wielding herself. Despite a DOA hard drive and some mis-connected wires, everyone was smiling when it was all finished. (Slide show here.)"

Comments

How is this news?

[matts-reign]

Person puts computer together while boyfriend watches. Why is this on the front page of slashdot?

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's news because someone on slashdot finally got a girlfriend. CONGRATS!

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Person puts computer together while boyfriend watches. Why is this on the front page of slashdot?

First, a self-professed geek (see author bio), has a girlfriend. This alone deserves several duplicates on slashdot front page. Second, astonishingly, she is not ugly. This would deserve to be on the NYTimes or FoxNews. Third, he manages to combine voyeurism and shiny new hardware - all this documented with color pictures !

Re:How is this news?

[weighn]

I hope slashdot will provide further encouragement by covering the first girl to attend University or do nuclear physics. Marie Curie was covered in this story last year. She did nuclear physics AND was the first female professor at the Sorbonne.

Re:How is this news?

[91degrees]

A geek managed to watch and not interfere while someone with less experience than them assembled a PC!

Have you any idea how difficult this is? We're all control freaks.

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who don't know, here's the wikipedia article.

Re:How is this news?

[mh1997]

I will go as far as to consider registering the partnership at a civil notary...I will not, however, partake in ceremonies that have their roots in organized religion.

Darn, even notaries have their toots in organized religion!

NOTARII was the term given to shorthand writers who in the early days of the Christian Church reported the examinations and trials of the early Christian martyrs and confessors. They were employed to take down in writing the whole judicial process of the Roman judges against the martyrs, and to write out the circumstances of their examination and passion. The early notary recorded the questions put to the Martyrs and the answers they gave.

The first institution of these NOTARII at Rome was under the Emperor Fabian. Notaries were also employed to take down the discourse of eloquent preachers. By this means many of St Chrystostom's sermons were preserved.

reality

[User 956]

When his lovely girlfriend Glenda needed a new PC, Jason Cross, who spends much of the week assembling PCs with the latest gear to test for ExtremeTech, decided he would let her build it herself.

This article doesn't read so much as "hey guys, it's possible for a girl to put together a PC", so much as it reads "Hey guys, look at my girlfriend. No, really, I have one. Let me show you her."

WTF?

[gowen]

Geek has girlfriend. Film at 11.

Look, I'm sure this was fun, and all, but seriously... When did "Stuff that matters" become "Some guy's holiday snaps."

GAAAAH!!!

[mark-t]

She's using a power-screwdriver on a computer????

For crying out loud, it's a computer case, not a swingset and not furniture... The point of the screw is to hold things in place, not to fix them so fast that they are going to be resistant to coming out.

I was taught that you _ALWAYS_ hand-tighten screws on a computer case, and even then only just to the point that it just stops turning freely, because that way you won't accidentally strip the threads.

Re:GAAAAH!!!

[gujo-odori]

My dad always hand-tightens screws on computer cases. Of course, most people need a power screwdriver to get them *out* after he's tightened them, but...

what a shitty BF though..

[Indy1]

he made her install Vista. Shame to build such a nice box, and put the worst possible OS on it.

Interesting? Not really.

[Merritt.kr]

I'm a girl. I build and rip apart computers all the time. And every time I do, MY girlfriend is always bugging me to let her get in there with the screwdriver! Maybe I should write up a story and take some pictures: "The lesbian geek couple mess with computer innards!" Oooohhh.

Let me be the first to say...

[Kadin2048]

I'm a girl. I build and rip apart computers all the time. And every time I do, MY girlfriend is always bugging me to let her get in there with the screwdriver! Maybe I should write up a story and take some pictures: "The lesbian geek couple mess with computer innards!" Oooohhh. Useless without pics.

Let's all take this as a reminder to

[The Iso]

Go to the Firehose and bury inconsequential stories.

Yeah honey, I listened to your needs, honest!

[nick_davison]

She gave him her list of needs, he came up with a part list Her list ran:

Run Word or another word processor for college stuff
Heavy Internet surfing (multiple windows)
Store and play plenty of music
Store and manage big digital art files, including many-layered Photoshop files
Operate quietly
Play the latest games without turning details way down Dropping $400 on a GPU when gaming is at the bottom of her list then skimping on $100 of memory when she's trying to run large PSDs on Vista screams of a gamer who once again ignored what he was being asked to get in favor of what he thought was cool.

2GB of ram will just about get Vista running with a little left over for smaller PSDs. The size PSDs she's talking about will be thrashing the hard drive to run. Doubling that ram up to 4GB, what's generally regarded as the sweet spot for Vista anyway, and dropping to a $300 graphics card would serve her far better for her main needs and let her still run pretty much any modern game with pretty decent quality settings.

But, hey, he gets to reassure himself it's a sweet gaming rig with that quad core processor and the 8800. Just a shame that was lowest on her list of requirements and likely added after a few rounds of, "Are you sure you wouldn't like to play games? I know they're not your main focus. But surely you'd like the option, right?"

Even ignoring that she plays Civ IV and Oblivion (both of which will run just fine on much cheaper hardware), he commits a cardinal sin amongst gamers too: He bought what he figured would be great for running a game in the future (Spore), not what was needed for her level of gaming now. Spore won't be out until sometime next year and probably late spring at the earliest from what they're saying. That $100 off the GPU now wouldn't cost her much right now, would get her the memory that would really aid her, and she'll likely want to upgrade to whatever the latest and greatest GPU is in a year's time for Spore anyway. At that point, it'll be pretty much guaranteed that $300 on nVidia's 9xxx series will beat $400 on the 8xxx series now and have whatever fun and exciting new features the 9xxx series has that nVidia worked with Maxis to get in to Spore.

It's cool to share building their PC with your girlfriend/wife/mother/friend/anyone who wouldn't normally build one, giving them a real sense of ownership and achievement with their new PC. But fooling yourself in to believing they need what you think is cool, rather than actually listening to their needs, is a great way to undo a lot of that when they realize they got you something cool rather than built what was right for them.

And, yes, this comes from a guy who sat there while his wife tapped on dozens of keyboards because she figured I'd make sure it simply worked and so the most important thing to her was the keyboard felt right. To me, that was crazy. To her, it was what mattered. So, crazy or not, I listened and made sure she got what felt perfect to her.

A slap in the face of gender equality

[zarkzervo]

My significant other plays video games, has a far better computer than I and she actually played Planetarion. I don't consider my story newsworthy.

This is just another way of saying: "Hey, World! Here on Slashdot, we consider women far inferior to men when it comes to technology. We can't imagine girls interested in computers, so we will make it a headline whenever a girl tries something techy."

Come on!

Re:Windows Experience Index?

[Gadget_Guy]

If this is how broken the business rules of their software are, I can only imagine how broken the implementation must be.
Microsoft, you're a disgrace.

I agree completely. This shows how vile Microsoft is as a company, by choosing this absurd scale without a nice round number as a maximum. Seriously, decisions like this show how the company should be broken up and have the workers sold into slavery - brothels for the women, while the men can be sent down mines in third world countries.

Forget DRM, this arbitary scale of the Windows Experience Index is what will really kill off the operating system.

It is so obvious that the scale should have had a maximum of 10, with the current level of computers sitting at around 1.5. And in many years to come when computer hardware has progressed enough to surpass 10, they should make it constantly play a looped voice saying "DOES NOT COMPUTE" while emitting smoke from the hard drive. This is the only sensible solution.