All I want for Christmas
23 Nov 2004
Pity poor Dan. His dreams come true on Christmas morning when he discovers that Santa has brought him a new PC. But they turn to dust as the new year dawns…
‘I’ve warned all my friends and neighbours, better watch out for yourselves, they should never give a license, to a man who plays with elves.’ - Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.
It was Christmas Eve. And Dan was prepared. A plate of cookies and a glass of milk had been left on the table in the lounge and a stocking had been hung with care by the chimney where the old fella could easily locate it. With everything in its place, Dan retired to bed, dreaming of the wondrous thing that Santa would bring him during the night.
As the sun poked its weary head over the horizon the following morning, Dan raced downstairs to discover what the King of the Elves had left him. He opened the door to the lounge and peeked around the corner. And there it was, bulging in the stocking! A present that exceeded all expectations - a Media Centre enabled PC!
Dan was ecstatic. It was everything he wanted and more. Now, he could store, play and burn DVDs, play CDs, listen to MP3’s, watch TV and surf the Internet, wirelessly interface with any other devices he had (once he’d bought them) and oh, so much more. And with the use of the handy dandy remote control unit he could do it all from the comfort of his couch.
Dan set to work unwrapping the new beast and connecting all of the hardware up. An hour later, the new system sprang to life much to Dan’s delight.
But before he could make use of the systems new potential, Dan had some ground work to do. First off, of course, he had to ensure that he had a good firewall and virus scanner enabled. Although the new system had come shipped with such software, it was only good for one month. So Dan took the precaution of forking out an extra £50 over the Internet that morning for a year subscription to the service just to be on the safe side.
Next of course, Dan had to visit the site of the OS vendor just to ensure that the OS was up to date too. But it wasn’t. And so Dan spent another hour just downloading and installing the latest revision.
By then, it was time for Christmas dinner. But Dan was far too engaged with his new present to be bothered with eating much. He gulped down a quick plate of beans on toast and rushed back to his new toy.
Back at the console, he spent another hour creating a system backup on six CDs, just in case the beast should ever crash.
Then, safe in the knowledge that his PC was up to date and timed to automatically update itself with new software over the Internet, he set about transferring his entire collection Of Star Wars films and Aubrey ‘Moon’ Mullican CDs onto the enormous hard drive of the new unit.
Come tea time, Dan was tired and I must say a bit fed up. It seemed he had spent all day babysitting the new box rather than actually getting any enjoyment out of it. It had been interesting, but it hadn’t really been fun.
In the New Year, his phone bill arrived. And it was only then that he discovered that his Media Centre had become infected with ‘diallers’. While he had lay sleeping in bed, his own beloved had been having an affair with some rather insidious and expensive web sites it had dialled of its own accord.
Dan was more than annoyed. The honeymoon was over. He packed his PC back into its box and drove it back to the shop where he swapped it for a trouble free 32 inch widescreen plasma TV.
