It was a cold night. I was sick from lack of sleep. There was too much work to do and too little time to do it. Plenty of time to sleep when you are dead right?

Well something similar is true too. So I was sitting there typing away, responding to some emails when suddenly my cursor did a familiar thing to me. Usually it just means my cordless mouse has run out of batteries and I need to perform an emergency swap, but, this time something was different. I could feel it. In fact, I could see if when I turned my mouse upside down and the red laser flashed steadily back at me, as if to say, "I'm still here for you".

It was then that I realised that my poor PC would need to undergo an emergency reboot. I gently wiped a tear from my eye as I took one last glance at my longer than normal email response frozen on the screen, as if in cyber limbo (actually it was very similar to cyber limbo). I looked over at the countless IM conversations that I had open. People who needed me and who would soon think I had reason to block them, as I am never offline except during extenuating circumstances. I looked at my 50+ programs open in the task bar and wondered if I would remember them all when I logged back in. I saw the seemingly endless internet tabs open, each hiding a smile that said something like "I did it. I froze your computer! You should have disabled javascript when you had the chance! MWAHA!"

And that was it. Just as quickly as I looked away from the screen and flipped the power switch, they were gone. Everything was gone. The gentle hum of my 12 case fans stopped. The green and red lights of a few of my case fans blinked a few times but alas, the colors faded away. The warm glow of my monitor was now just a cold glare. It was just me now. The room grew cold. I waited. Milliseconds turned to seconds. Before I knew it 30 seconds had gone by. I waited some more. I needed to give my computer a proper restart. One that every computer tech support phone rep would be proud of. Seconds turned to minutes, one long minute. I waited for a full 60 seconds and then it was time. I reached down behind my PC and felt for the power switch. Got it. I switched it.

Nothing. Well of course not. I still hadn't pressed the power button on the front of the PC. I pressed it, holding it in just a second or two before moving my finger away. Nothing. I double-checked the power switch. It was in the right position. I held the power button down again. Nothing. I began to panic. It was as if my PC was going into cardiac arrest. I quickly flipped the power switch up and down all while every once in a while trying the front power button. Nothing. My PC had flat-lined.

I sat there in the quiet room getting ahold of myself. It was only midnight. What would I do for the next 4 hours that I had planned to stay up late working? What could I do? I sat there and every few minutes I would try powering up again. Nothing.

I finally went to bed. The familiar sound of my PC's gentle hum was not there to help me fall asleep. The loud sound of an incoming IM was not there to accidentally wake me when I forgot to turn my speakers down. And I slept better than I have in ages.

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In closing, as of earlier today I now have a brand new 800W power supply thanks to the good people at CompUSA and Visa (for spotting me the $260). It's about 1:30am the night after and I have a lot of work to catch up on! So after I'm done making long pointless and random posts like this I will get right on that!

That really sucks. I haven't had that happen to me, but as much as I use my computer it may happen someday, when I least expect it.

As least you were able to get a new one quickly and get it put in so that you can continue using you computer.

Just wait till the Hard Drive crashes

Glad to see that you are still up and running. By the way does your power supply use ball bearings?

I remember when I had a Packard Bell 80286 and was looking for a power supply that I found an article on whether to buy one that used it or not.

I'm not sure but where would I look to see if it does?

One thing I know is that this thing sounds so nice. It's a lot quieter than my old one.

Should be on the box or in the manual specs somewhere. I'm going to guess the ball bearing make it super quiet but you run the risk of loosing the power supply when one cracks.

I did so googling and couldn't find and links to PS's without bearings so it appears this technology took over. As a mattter of fact.... they now have dual ball bearing out now.

Well, My Power supply died like buddy hybrix's computer did.

Although that was a LONG LONG time ago.

My Hard Drive crashed On christmas eve (this one that just passed bye)
It was frusterating. I needed to install windows all over again.

Wow, I remember when this happened. My power supply went out recently, and I had to dig an old, loud, and 100w one out of an old computer.