“People tend to develop strong ties to a specific computer, even if it means waiting to use their favourite machine, say researchers. A team at Pennsylvania State University found that people were drawn to a PC because of their tendency to assign human attributes to machines.” Read the article here.
Computer Loyalty
About The Author
Adam Scheinberg
Technology Executive • Web Developer • Father • Foodie • Music Snob • OS enthusiast
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I guess that explains why I hate my Dell precision and it hates me.
“I guess that explains why I hate my Dell precision and it hates me.”
Maybe it’s because you’re running win98 on it? Cause that’s what caused my relationship with my old one to fail…
I guess that explains why I love my iBook
I would never do such a thing.
*me hugs my friendly, beautifull, linuxrunning ibook*
iMac 350 — Figwit
iBook 600 — Galadriel
PowerMac DP 868 — Glorfindel
Gateway PII 366 — Firefly
Homebuilt PIII 750 — Ad Astra
Compaq 486/100 — Deus Volt
My old work computer, a Gateway PIII 733 was named Maxwell. Maxwell, despite his humble 256mb of ram and W98se never, never let me down.
The current work comptuer, an e-machine with a Gateway namebadge on it, a P4 2.0 with a gig of ram suffers from mysterious freezes, hangs, crashes, and overall lag time that has me grinding my teeth in frustration. I call it “Desktop Doorstop” or “POS” depending on how angry I am at it. (My liason down in Systems can’t stand hers, either.)
It is so true
eMac- Hari (Crystal)
HP- Sogo (Frustration)
Name themes are pretty common on networks. At work, my servers are all sorts of little pests: HORNET, WASP, BEETLE, MOUSE, TERMITE, SOLDIER, FIREANT, GNAT, BUMBLEBEE. My switches are ARMYANT1, ARMYANT2…
At home, I used to have SURESHOT, ROOTDOWN, BRASSMONKEY, and SABOTAGE. These days I’m down to just TERRANCE and PHILLIP.
My PC has 2 personalities (dual boot):
Good side = (daemon) aka *BSD
Evil side = (bsod) aka w2k
I’m much more than loyal to my computer, I’m intimate with it
I’m much more than loyal to my computer, I’m intimate with it
I could believe that ;p
Yeah, I name all mine, and each one has a “different personality,” which I assume is their specific combo of memory chips, peripherals, mobo, etc…
Mine are all named after anime and cartoon charaters: Totoro, Kiki, Megumi, Belldandy, Osana, etc… makes it easy to say, “I am switching out Osana’s video card with Keiichi’s” rather than, I am swapping the video card from the Dell GX110 P2/450 to the frankenputer P2/400…”
You can also say, “Mononoke is dead,” or “Megumi’s fast, but has a crappy onboard video, so don’t use the gui on Megumi…”
Film at 11, folks. People act this way with cars, with chairs, with all sort of inanimate objects. No reason why computers should be different.
No, a much greater mystery awaiting research is why people will casually ask you for a printout of the project you’re working on, with no thought to the cost involved. But when you give it to them on floppy disk or, these days, a CD-RW, they will move heaven and earth to get that dirt-cheap piece of plastic back to you! Anyone else ever notice that?
That explains why I’m still with my amiga …
(Just that it’s called Pegasos now 😉 )
Wow… I’ve had a lot of computers over the past 13 years, but I’ve never named a single one of them… What’s the use?
Right now it’s just “m’n vaste” (meaning: “my immobile”) and “m’n laptop” (meaning, well, “my laptop”).
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–Dutch translator for SkyOS, v5.0–
I find this research to be questionable. Not saying that i disagree with the results, however. but the fact is that the reason most students tend to go back to one computer is that they either have spesific content stored on the hard drive (like a paper they are writing) or have installed spesific software.
people like consistant enviroments, not computers.
There are about 20 computers in my house (my flat mate and i run a biz out of here). With about 10 of them beeing windows XP. The XP boxxes i can find my way around, though i perfer to use one of my three beboxes because I have tailored to my needs.
All that said, all the computer/routers here are named
Well, I’ve been thinking on a name for my computer, and I think I have just found one: “Slut”, because she tends to switch OS quite often
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–Dutch translator for SkyOS, v5.0–
The author did not say whether the content stored on the computers used in the study were carefully restricted to specific apps and data files.
My personal observation is that students will wait on a specific computer because it has their personal work (papers, etc.) on it or they have set up a web browser in their name. They shy away from available computers that are different such as too old, too slow for them, wrong OS or even the wrong OS version. Occasionally a student will prefer a particular location in the lab as long as they are confortable with that particular computer.
Since the author did not spell out how they conducted the test it is not possible to comment on the results. My personal opinion is that they have drawn the wrong conclusions, based upon what is written, due to insufficient data to back their position.
I’d like to think it’s the emotional attachment I have with my million year old 233mHz, but I think it’s likely do to my being poor. At any rate, I still do seem to have a strage attraction to it, especially after all those years of breaking and fixing it. Maybe it’s just that now I’m finally familiar with all it’s little issues.
Article has a point but it is on a wrong thing. Oldschool computers usually have a connection between their computers. This includes C64,Amiga,Mac users mostly. If you are into scene you can pretty much see this. On the other hand PC users are just people who use computer, I dont see any of them treating their PCslike I treat my Amiga
. After all PC users are just users.
I have a particular computer in the lab at school that I always use. If I walk in and someone else is on it- I get jealous. I reluctantly sit down at another (identical) machine, but I’m careful not to put my blind trust in it. That kind of thing has to be earned.
how, I have this knind of attraction with my old atari 800XL. I recently buy some games on ebay cause my old disk are unreadable now.. It runs for 20 years now, and runs well
I agree with you, I don’t have this kind of sensation with PCs.. perhaps just for my laptop… perhaps cause it lives uch more longer than my BigBox…
“After all PC users are just users.”
I get the point you’re trying to make– but you’re talking about the “end-user” now– Linux-freaks, the remaining stubborn BeOS users, xBSD-addicts etc– they value their PC more than does the end user…
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–Dutch translator for SkyOS, v5.0
I know what you mean. Actually I agree with you, every user except windows users have somethings with their computers
. But even though you have a point I also think there is also hardware side of the things. I will give an example of Amiga, becasue I know it the most. I believe even the way they name the Amiga custom chips(Paula, Lisa,Amber) is an example of soul. When you look at any PC it is plain col 
. Anyway I got your point though.
In addition to computer at my desk at work, when I work the desk, I have a choice of 4 different comptuers. In *theory* they’re all set up the same. (Just as in theory all the public use terminals are identical.)
50% of the time, one of these computers “forgets” my wallpaper (ShirtlessSpike!) or the way I have my desktop icons arranged, or when I run Opera, thinks it is the first time. I don’t like to use it because I don’t trust it.
What I’m getting at is, in a lab, all the computers may be the same on paper, but there are subtle qualitative differences among them. Keyboard feel, settings on the programs, the way the light hits the screen at a certain time of day … things like that. Not necessarily the fact that the student has files on a machine’s hard drive.
These familiar quirks are why students return to these machines and will wait for them. Continuity of experience. And yes, after awhile, having grown used to the unique features of a certain machine, it becomes “your” machine.
When we switched from our old comptuers to the new ones, several students asked if there was a way they could buy “their” computer from the library.
The servers in the library where I work are all named after various trees: redwood, rosewood, pinion (which is the pine server), bamboo, elm, ash, apple, oak, maple, willow, etc.
I also believe that names have power and when giving a name to an inanimate object, one needs to be careful — The servers on campus that run lotus notes are named domino 1, 2, 3 and 4 …. and not a month goes by where one or all does not topple.
I bought an iBook a few weeks ago ‘cos my no name PC (win98 & Mdk 9.0 Linux) was having problems – not good when you’ve a thesis to write!
My old machine was called “Babes”, but I haven’t thought of a name for my iBook yet.
However…
…it is love. True love. I’m in bliss with my new machine, and would take her with me everywhere I go! Best of all, I can!
Sad, innit?!?!?!
I’d say the placement in the room is my number one criteria when choosing a workstation. Performance is another. These criteries rarely change, creating the illusion of staying true to a certain computer. Personal computers, (be they classics, PCs, Macs, mobile or whatever), are a completely differense issue. That’s like comparing a rental car to your own.
Your name will refelct how you see the machine.
My Linux server is called PerchX It truely is an Isolated point that can watch and see everyone.
My Dell gaming machine is called Point, and like standing on the edge of a point does crash, but it is to bad, I am down to reinstalling windows every year.
I used to have a Packard Bell that was donated to me and it worked well and had slack 9.1 installed.. It was affectionately named “trashbin special” 🙂 Now I have a compaq and call it “The Compaq” 🙂
AnImAl
Am I the only one here that thinks computers are just tools? Am I missing something. I enjoy using computers, but they are just a tool, right?
As for lab computers, I just pick the one closest to the door cause I’m lazy and don’t want to walk that far.
Go read M. Merleu-Ponty’s Phenominology of Perception.
And then see if you can say “it’s just a …” about any object that you touch.
😉
Go read M. Merleu-Ponty’s Phenominology of Perception.
And then see if you can say “it’s just a …” about any object that you touch.
😉
The lab computers at Penn State have shared network drives. You can access you files from any of them any time. All the windows boxes (the vaste majority run windows) are WinXP. Nearly all the Macs were replaced a year ago, most are 1 ghz imacs. Then there is one lab with linux for the fortran classes, also on very nice hardware. Your settings are saved so if you log on any XP computer on campus everything is still there from the last computer you logged on. So moving around to differant computers makes no differance. Same goes for the linux boxes. The Macs are differant. Any settings you change are lost at log out. This pisses me off since I tend to use them now. And the defaults on the Macs are god awful.
So basicly there is nothing tieing you to a previous computer. The observation about people using the same ones is definitly true here. I know I boosted that stat. But the thing is I tend to use certain ones for a reason, where they are in the room. I like many people, like having their back to a wall, or at the least not having their screen facing where everyone is looking at it. I don’t want to be next to the door or printer. So this narrows things down. Also things like the chair at a computer, or the mouse hooked to it makes a differance. Most the macs have MS mouses hooked to them, but some have the one button mouse. People sit at the ones with the real mouse first before ones with the crap one button mouse. So the computers themself are not always equal.
I wish this article had more info. Another thing is if they broke things down to habits in one lab. Since people will use the same labs since they are on the path of their classes.
Also OS usuage plays a key. Since I have no issue using a mac, i can usualy find a free computer, while there will be a line for the windows computers. This was real bad when we still had os9 a year ago. There would be huge lines for the windows boxes, and only 2-3 macs in use. I was one in the line. That has changed a lot, but still plenty of people don’t want to mess with figuring out a mac, and thats understandable. But plenty have given it a go.
A lot of the computers did have names on them to at one time, i think this has changed.
There are many people who think that computers are just tools. But in reality computers are toys and there are infinitely many possibilities to play with them. That’s why they are so fascinating…
… when my flatmate came the kitchen crying, and told me that “Albert” had died. Took me about an hour before I understood that it was her laptop …
People must learn to never anthropomorphize computers. They don’t like it when we do that.
And like computers, I have a problem with that (heheh). I really do have a trust issue with the seemingly incomplete findings of this article. Maybe I’m missing something here or maybe the author assumed the reader would catch something and left it out, but something is missing. I think any behavioral study which claims to have concluded something needs to be fairly comprehensive. I’m not sure the super-dynamic variables of this particular behavior have been addressed. Like someone earlier commented… it seems like the simplest thing to consider is the location of the lab and the chosen spot within. Maybe that’s just because my own first criteria for choosing a computer is it’s location. My opinion though is that I’m not the only one. I would like more information on this one. Interesting topic though.