Stuffed with Cotton, they Must Be

I sat down to check mail this morning and felt like staying a while. It's comfortable in this office; no one to divert my attention this week. Just me and this little Mac right now, with a cup of coffee. And my ears are ringing.

It took me a minute to figure it out, but I finally realized why this office is so much more comfortable and quiet since yesterday. It's because last night before I went to bed I shut down my PC. It is still off. I hear the clock on the wall and beyond the sound of my typing, it is the loudest thing in the room.

Inside my PC there are four fans. One inside the power supply, two on the back of the case, and one mounted to the processor heat sink. Once one of them collects enough dust, it gets a little off-balance and so begins the first vibrations. Downhill from there.

I can't imagine how much power the entire system uses, either. Connected to the system are myriad devices, including a flatbed scanner, 320GB external hard drive, my iPod, amplified 3-piece speaker set, two printers, and two 19-inch LCD monitors. Everything is on top of my desk and blares right in my face. All of it is off at the moment. Just the sound of a clock powered by 1 AA battery.

How long will it be before I have to turn it back on?



Update: Probably not long, because that 320GB HDD is inaccessible to the Mac due to the drive's format (NTFS), which, I am guessing, is not supported by Mac OS X 10.2.8. Here I go again...