My favorite computer
By Edward Willis (gopher://encw.xyz and http://encw.xyz)
Published Feb/23/2025

My favorite computer, that I've ever owned, is my Compaq R4000, which was the 
second computer I ever bought for myself. I bought it in 2005. It was a heavy 
old desktop replacement laptop. If you hit someone with it you could be charged 
with assault with a deadly weapon. Since it was a laptop with a black lid and a 
silver body, I called mine Blacktop.

This laptop was built like a tank, and it had everything you could reasonably 
ask for: RJ45, removable battery, optical drive, upgradeable memory, and beefy 
64-bit processor. 

It was tremendously fast for a laptop of its price. It could play 3D games like 
a champ. The battery life was only 3-4 hours with the screen dimmed doing light 
browsing, but that wasn't really the point of it. It was more for touring the 
world's power outlets than being a truly moble machine; I'd never not bring 
the power brick. I carried it about in one of those Targus soft briefcases 
because I wasn't cool enough to know to carry it in a backpack.

It served as my primary computer for 6 years, those young adult years, and past 
the birth of my first child. Thereafter it was still used, but less so.

One day I found that the screen had failed, and so, being a stupid young 
person, I pulled the hard drive and threw it out. Yeah. I regret doing that. I 
grew to miss it later and bought a few other old R4000s, but it wasn't the 
same.