Having just spent the last few days running diagnostic tools over my new PC, I have come to a few interesting conclusions:

• Seemingly random hard drive corruption is annoying, especially when it doesn't show up on low-level scans.
• Random corruption is especially annoying when you've just aquired several gigabytes worth of data, all of which is now toast.
• Sometimes RAM fails in strange ways that will still allow it to pass the BIOS check on bootup.
• Sometimes failed RAM causes seemingly random hard drive corruption, but doesn't cause system crashes.
• 128M DIMMs are currently AU$70.

I am now the proud owner of a shiny new PC, filled with random corruption and only 64M of useable RAM. Guess who's going to be spending tonight reinstalling operating systems?