Last week I learnt a very valuable lesson in my life. Thanks to a lifeless mess of semiconductors called a Computer..more specifically my Laptop.
Ever since I left India , I was sure my laptop was no good. It had 256 mb RAM and 60 Gb HDD which was pathetic. Even more Pathetic was the fact that it was a Celeron Vintage. I mean in this age of Dual Core and quad core ,Celeron was a Dinasour. And 60 GB as like trying to move a home by packing into a tiny vanity bag. Too much crap..too less flip flops.
Add to this the fact that it was a low end compaq and not very good looking. Kept gathering dust on its screen and to put it simply it was too ugly, too slow, too small and too old(it was only three yrs old). The pages wre loadaaaadddiiinnn for eternity and formatting, defragmenting , reloading OS ,cleaning registry etc all tried and all failed.
I had decided that I wudnt spend a pie on this piece of shit till I throw it away. I mean the logic was this . ..If I upgraded the RAM, changed the drive and bought a new HDD , it would cost 1/3rd of the Cost Price of the laptop. And accounting for the 20% depreciation cost ..it wudnt make any sense doing the upgrade as long as it was "just working".
So gradually the Laptop was used as a stop gap and only for browsing while I did all my work on IIT computer.
One final nail came when I tried to load MATLAB 6 and the computer gave up.
As soon as I earned enough I wud buy a new ..most likely a VAIO laptop...That was the decision made.
Soon however settling down into the humdrum I couldnt get time to think about changing it. Infact everytime I went to a store I was always in the laptop section ..comparing this ..seeing that etc.
One fine day I decided that I needed storage space and my 2gb card wasnt much help. So I started looking for a portable drive and relised that it doesnt make sense to invest in another small flash drive ..I wud go for something where I could do a back up of all softwares . There was an offer for a 1 TB hdd and I bought it.
Now things began to change.
As I shifted the data to the drive. My laptop picked up...but just. I mean nothing noticable but I could feel that it was making a valiant effort. The fan was trying to cool its already overburdened processor as it tried to take on newer softwares,and I could hear it.
You may find it funny but I felt something for this old machine. I mean as I waited for the pages to refresh and heard the furious roar of its cooling fan...I felt that poor guy ..its trying its best. And I felt ashamed of myself. Seriously. I felt that while this laptop gave me hours of trouble free time(it had never broken down even once)..I was denying its basic "computer rights".
Every laptop had rights to better RAM and HDD and here I was being a creep ..thinking of throwing it away without giving it a fair chance.
So I thought lets make a try. I went and bought the cheapest possible RAM 512 and added it. Defragmented, removed junk data and cleaned up the entire thing...including the now dusty TFT.
Half expecting it to respond. As I switched it on again..I expected the same huffing and puffing and maybe a slight increase in speed . But nothing prepared me for the burst of energy.
It was as if I actually had a new laptop..The speed and response was faar faar beyond my expectations and it was actually as if I bought a new laptop.
I dont care about the money spend on HDD or RAM. What I care about is the fact that it taught me a valuable lesson.
A lesson that often we try to impress and invest time and energy in new people we meet. How often do we(make that "I") make a sincere effort to show that dedication to people who have been always there for us?
Yes, that is an oft repeated lesson and u may ask ..oh we knew that all along.
I am cool with that ..I do not deny that . But as far as I am concerned most lessons make a mark when you relearn them yourself ...and this was one of them.
BTW I am searching for a new name for my lappy..Any suggestions? ;)
1 comment:
Indeed its a great lesson. Thanks for sharing it. This blog reminded me of book titled "The Goal". This is the book that most of the operations management teacher asks students to read as a part of the course. The book talks about how best you can utilize the resources you have. For example, slow laptop is better than no laptop. You just need to plan and co-ordinate your other operations to utilize it to its full potential. The book also teaches that an incremental improvement of a bottleneck resource gives better results than a full replacement of a non bottleneck resource.
In your case you did the right thing. I appreciate the emotional angle with the "laptop rights" concerns, but I see this strictly as an operations mangement problem. And you hit the right solution.
I happen to write a blog on a more generalized version of your laptop lesson. In short you have changed your paradigm and focus from cutting costs to clearing constraints. (Read my blog heading "costs vs constraints")
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