Techy alert

Only read this one if you like computers and an interesting story. This will be co-authored by Mr. Tech in our family, Joseph.

This story begins about two years ago. That is when we decided that we would need a desktop computer sometime in the near future....well, after the two year time warp, we decided it was really time to get a desktop computer!

I (Joseph) had just gotten a new camera and had successfully researched about all there was to research about point and shoot cameras on the market... I thought hey how hard can it be to research computers? HARD!! Besides the fact that there are over 500 HP desktops alone that have reviews online (over 500 don't have reviews) I quickly found that researching computers is about 4000 times harder!! to make a long story short (I have to get off in 2 minutes) we ended up deciding that we would build our own computer... and I will have my dad fill you in on the rest (and I will add the techy details).

Joseph and I went to a Ben Computer to see what was available. We were surprised to find a busy, overcrowded, open air feel (quite typical here, as they do not close the big double doors) store. We talked to a sale agent and we were given a magazine with all the parts and prices the store carries, which is updated every 4 or 5 days. Joseph began to write some ideas down of what we needed in a computer to have one that would allow us to do video editing, plus all the other things we would use it for.

On the magazine it showed the address of another Ben Computer store, which was closer to our home. This store was bigger and had a nice sales agent who talked with Ann and I. He only spoke Vietnamese and our computer Vietnamese is quite limited. So it was interesting trying to describe to him the different items we would need. For example I think it took us 5 minutes to ask about the Ethernet port for internet. We found the right word eventually, it is in-ter-net (no tones). Just in case you needed to know. Fortunately most of the items we could point at and ask for his recommendations.

We were able to decide on all the components and have them begin to build our computer. But then everything came to a crashing halt when the salesman called and said that Ben Computer in all of Hanoi did not have the Western Digital (WD) Hard Drives we wanted. He recommended Samsung. After more research, we decided that we wanted to stick with WD. After several calls back and forth, and it was determined that they were not able to obtain WD hard drives any time soon, Ann suggested we try looking at another computer store. We found the hard drives. I called and asked if we could bring the hard drives we found at another store to the Ben Computer store so that the computer could be finished. He said, "sure". So our computer was built. But then came another issue, software...

Software becomes very complicated in Vietnam. It is very easy to obtain software that is "cracked" as they call it. We were able to purchase a real version of Vista, from outside of Vietnam. We tried to upgrade it over the internet (so Windows Media Player would work), but it is not offered in our area yet so we could not buy it. Those IP addressees our computers give out let Microsoft know we are in Vietnam. Amazing isn't. There is more to this story, but it is just hours of boring detail on fixing our computer from the way it came to us.

We now have a fine working machine that we hope will allow us to edit video to share with our friends and family back home.