User blog comment:Revvie/Notes about recent inactivity/@comment-30095342-20140221134907

I know PC troubles well, probably too well. A relative of mine deals with computing and he has tons of parts lying around from part exchanges, plus some decrepid laptops (hint #1).Rather than have them gathering dust, he decided to sell them to me for not much money. (hint #2).

The first laptop kept restarting randomly and sometimes I'd struggle to get anywhere near the desktop. The fan gave up on it.

The second one and the third one had really iffy mice (and the second one's hard drive was tiny and nearly full). Both of them died due to dead hard drive and mysterious screen issue respectively.

My current machine is a proper desktop with proper speakers and a proper mouse and hard drive (1Tb anyone?) and I hope it will do me until the time comes to upgrade/replace.