Know When to Open the Box - Industry Trend or Event

Home Office Computing, July, 2000 by John Dickinson

The Longer I'm around PCs, the Less interested I am in taking them apart. Gone are the days when a happy weekend was one spent sitting in a sea of tools, small screws, ISA and PCI expansion cards, and other periphery that make PCs more useful and fun to use. Now, I'd rather work on my car, plant shrubs--even do one-handed push-ups at the gym, for that matter.

Even so, I'll take a PC apart when I have to. And that's more often than it should be in this day and age of fully Loaded systems, plug-and-play peripherals, and USB buses for attaching new devices. In fact, it's the USB bus that disappoints me the most. Not only are USB devices few and far between, but they're expensive--damned expensive at that.

For instance, the other day I received a new, fully equipped Performance 750 desktop from Gateway. Really nice machine, but Gateway had mistakenly installed a HomePNA network adapter, not the 10/100 Ethernet card I'd requested. Since it was a Saturday--a rainy one at that, with no hope of washing the car--and I wanted my new computer up and running, I drove to CompUSA to buy an Ethernet device.

On the way, I decided the simplest solution would be to buy a USB-to-Ethernet adapter so I could avoid opening the PC and messing around with PCI cards. Sure enough, there were two or three USB/ Ethernet connectors to choose from, but each cost $50 or more. It seemed that LAN connectivity should be cheaper than that, so T sauntered to the other end of the aisle. There, any number of 10/100Mbps PCI cards were priced from $20 to $35.

Guess which T chose. For the additional cost of 10 minutes of screwdriver work and 5 minutes spent installing the plug-and-play driver for my new Linksys Ethernet card, I pocketed $30. That's Like saving $120 an hour--not bad for a rainy Saturday, and well worth the small amount of aggravation. Much as I hate to, I highly recommend it.