Computers go slower the longer you keep them, says the folklore. I disagree. What affects computers’ speeds are the decisions made by Microsoft Update developers and managers.
This fact of life emerged while sprucing up a ThinkPad this month for a friend, as detailed over the page. It’s been something of a Lenovo month all round as a Lenovo C30 workstation was on the bench at the same time. There were a lot of bargains available in the aftermath of Christmas and New Year, and this one seemed unmissable: 40 processor cores, 64GB RAM and a K-series Nvidia workstation graphics card for 200 quid? My hand was on the PayPal checkout almost without conscious thought.
It has, despite its luscious, early mega-core specification, been a royal pain in the backside. This isn’t the fault of the developers, nor of Lenovo, but because I tried to do something foolish on unboxing day. The sensible course for any second-hand PC purchase is to perform a quick clean of the case, fans and heatsinks and run an inventory of what’s there and what’s not. But I was in new toy mode and had a legitimate need to be sure the machine at least booted – part of the reason it was so cheap was the absence of a hard disk.
To get this monster on the bench, I first had to clear away an earlier workstation build: a Dell Precision
