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In the early days when Personal Computers had just started to saturate the market, life was simple for the neanderthal geeks. Back then, when a 286 cost P50,000.00 and the peso had real value, he only had two choices, either he had an IBM Personal Computer or he had a clone.

I got started on an 80 Mhz 386 AMD bag of chips with 4MB of memory (making 286 users salivate) with a black and white VGA monitor that I later upgraded to color. For some reason, even 3-D apps could run without a hitch on such low power. My favorite game at the time was Wing Commander 2 for which I proudly created a boot disk to take advantage of "expanded memory."

Back to the point. Since IBM created the fundamental PC design, the only "original" Personal Computers had the IBM logo proudly emblazoned on them. Everything else was a "clone". Reputable names such as Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Philips (were there other names? and yes Philips used to manufacture PC’s, it was Philips’ advertising that in fact gave rise to the term "bag of chips") were considered "branded", but clones nevertheless.

Unlike IBM, Apple was more hesitant to release to the public the blueprint of its Macintosh, hence, there is no longer such thing as a Mac clone, allowing Apple greater control (and hegemony) of the quality of Mac products.

If your computer had been put together by your local neighborhood computer shop, it was considered "generic" or a "bag of chips".

Usage has confused the three terms, as people often refer to generic computers as clones. Well, esentially correct as ALL generic PC’s necessarily are clones. But we now know that not all clones are generic.

Well, this all has been relative peace and stability, because IBM’s personal computer business has been purchased by Lenovo Computers, China’s biggest manufacturer of *gasp* CLONES!

So what exactly is a clone now? If a manufacturer of clones owns IBM’s pc business, will anything branded "IBM" be considered a clone too? Are Lenovo clones already REAL personal computers? Should we just reduce the distinctions to "branded" and "generic"? Or "branded" and "clones"?

Does it really matter to you and me?

No.

Why on earth did I wite this?

Maybe I just had to get it out of my system.

I should write something more meaningful.

Next: HOW IBM LOST THE OS WARS, AND HOW IT CAN STILL WIN

More `puter stuff that everyone should know about. With the advent of the new motherboards that support the latest 64bit and dual core processors, POWER requirements have changed. This is one area where branded pc’s beat the generic "bag of chips". Since most of us scrimp on our pc’s, chances are that you have a computer assembled by someone you know rather than that nifty Hewlett-Packard on display. (Mac users: disregard the last sentence, you don’t know what the heck us PC geeks are talking about).

Fiddling around with my daughter’s spanking new PC that has one intake fan and two exhaust fans apart from the processor fan to cool that 3Ghz Intel monster, I was appalled to find it would not boot. Read that again: My daughter’s brand new pc WOULD NOT BOOT!

Looking through the see through casing, I could see a green light on. Not knowing what it was, I read the manual and found that it indicated the computer was on standby mode. Using that as a basis for browsing Intel’s website docs, I found that the likely problem was that the power supply could not generate sufficient standby power (at least 8A). The see through casing once again revealed that a twenty pin power supply had been plugged in a twenty four pin connector.

I asked my provider to change the power supply to which they retorted, ALL OUR POWER SUPPLIES are like that. Well, anticipating a lawsuit, I consulted with another provider and was informed that while I was correct with my analysis, my provider could not be faulted because practically ALL computer casings as of December 2005 had the wrong power supply for the new motherboards. "What we let our customers do," the nice gentleman said, "is pay an upgrade price for the proper power supply."

So I contacted my provider again and told them to contact me when they had the new 24 pin power supplies and as soon as they had one, I was more than glad to pay the upgrade price.

Why do I write this? Becuase, if you have purchased a generic "bag of chips" pc around december of 2005 to January of 2006, it is very likely YOU DO NOT HAVE THE CORRECT POWER SUPPLY. To determine if you have the right kind, perform the following test:

1. Turn off your PC. DO NOT TURN OFF THE UPS or AVR.

2. If you have an Intel motherboard or any other motherboard check if the standby indicator is on (located somewhere in the middle of the board).

3. Leave your computer on standby for up to 4 hours.

4. Try turning on your PC, if it does not boot, well you’ve got the wrong power supply. You know what to do.

There doesn’t seem to be any report about branded PC’s suffering from this problem. Can you imagine how much I wanted to hit myself on the head when a good friend of mine told me he could have IMPORTED a branded PC for me for the same price I bought my daughter’s system?