I bought a new computer.

I got one of those $200 computers from Wal-Mart with the defiantly anti-Microsoft operating system Linux on it--or more precisely, Lindows.

I promptly erased Lindows and replaced it with a Microsoft operating system. So sue me.

This is like a year-2000 era computer at best, maybe 1999. It has 128 megabytes of RAM and an 800 MHz processor. (The processor was manufactured not by industry titan Intel or even also-ran AMD, but rather: Via. Via?) On the other hand, it cost $200. And, appealingly, it has Ethernet built in.

It came with no modem, no floppy drive, and no CD burner. But I just all but retired my old computer, which is called, affectionately, Hank (this is not just frivolity: our computers here at the house are networked and each one has to be named something). So I took the modem, floppy drive, and CD burner out of Hank and put them into the new computer, called, even more affectionately, Faron. Faron also came with only a 10-gigabyte hard drive, but soon the old drive will come out of Hank, and then Faron will have two hard drives.

Things already seem much faster and better. Hank has a lowly, 90 MHz Pentium chip, with 40 megabytes of RAM. Slow. Reliable, but slow.