The laptop question

Chris has been struggling with the performance of his laptop for a couple of days. Tonight the machine was almost unusable. Booting up seemed to take forever and switching off was almost as long.

Fortunately I had copies of everything on my machine so we were able to use my laptop instead. It brought it home that despite all the development of PCs over the last few years, they still lack a simple built-in diagnostic that says where the problem is. Not everyone is interested enough to learn how to do simple diagnostics which creates a good business for some people. The real problem is that we have become so dependent on our computers that to have one performing below par puts a significant crimp on our ability to produce work for our clients.