Swapping Peripherals Around in Public Computer Rooms
Is it just me who does this or what? It's such a good idea, giving you the best computer in the whole room 
Whenever I use a computer at college (or in any public computer room for that matter, where possible) it's common to find yourself sitting down at a shit-heap with a broken mouse, crappy keyboard or blurry screen just because the computers haven't been upgraded or even looked after in such a long time. There's usually a few replacement mice, keyboards and screens which have taken the place of totally knackered hardware on random machines, and these bits of hardware are usually newer and better than the rest of them.
I just go around, taking the best mouse, keyboard and screen which I can find, putting them all together on my own machine and replacing them with the shitty parts from my computer. The result - a totally pimped out workstation which works much better than any other one in the room
Whenever I use a computer at college (or in any public computer room for that matter, where possible) it's common to find yourself sitting down at a shit-heap with a broken mouse, crappy keyboard or blurry screen just because the computers haven't been upgraded or even looked after in such a long time. There's usually a few replacement mice, keyboards and screens which have taken the place of totally knackered hardware on random machines, and these bits of hardware are usually newer and better than the rest of them.I just go around, taking the best mouse, keyboard and screen which I can find, putting them all together on my own machine and replacing them with the shitty parts from my computer. The result - a totally pimped out workstation which works much better than any other one in the room
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However, I do always pick the same computer if it's available. I've picked a good one, close to the teacher (so they don't constantly check my screen like they do with the ones on the back row) and I've configured it exactly to my liking (desktop, addons, bookmarks, portable apps set as defaults etc.)
I know my college goes all out forcing you to sign into each machine via your special student account that has to get updated with a new password/pin every quarter along with other security measures. One of the many reasons computer labs in campuses and elsewhere in public look like little safes, minus the obvious keyboard/mouse combo. I can't blame them either. They get overcharged like a mother fucker by HP/Dell for half as powerful equipment as I paid for my own machine 2 years ago. I've done it, it works and can be beneficial, but if you attend the college and have a class that forces you to use the computer lab it can be a pain in the fucking ass when half these fairly new looking machines are broke because fucktards either don't know what they're doing on a computer or steal parts.
I remember one of my last visits they were Dual Core machines with 2G RAM and from memory each user was given 80Gig standard storage space.
The whole facility had 100+ machines, often at 3am in the morning you'd be alone...and thinking, man, I wish they ran this as a badass cluster