CurseTheSky
Diamond Member
All of your basic needs are met: food, water, equipment to exercise, comfortable place to sleep, someone to occasionally chat with to keep from going insane, etc. You don't have a phone, PDA, game console, tablet, or anything else with Internet access. There's nothing to write with or draw on, and the room is boring and bleak - no windows, just a skylight and nothing to see.
Your ONLY form of regular entertainment is a computer. You are given a choice of which computer you want to use, but each has a fundamental flaw. You only have Internet access for one hour out of the entire day, and you are restricted from modifying the hardware or key software (installing a different OS, etc.).
Computer 1 is a Pentium II running Windows 95. The hardware and software are all from that general era (~1997). Since you only have Internet Explorer 2, many websites won't work or won't display properly. No patches or updates have been applied, or can be applied.
Computer 2 is an average modern big-box store machine. Everything is as you would expect it, except the 27" screen only goes up to 320x180 resolution. Nothing can fix this.
Computer 3 is another modern machine, and it has a high-resolution monitor - 2560x1440 pixels of glory. However, those pixels are all crammed into a tiny 2" screen. Holy DPI, Batman. It isn't a touch screen, and you can only use the basic text size adjustments and zooming built into Windows 7.
Computer 4 is a screaming i7 gaming machine with all of the best hardware. However, it overheats after running for around 20 minutes and immediately crashes every time. It needs a full 10 minutes to cool down before you can start it back up. No amount of extra ventilation or other tinkering can fix this problem. Launching anything that stresses components, such as a game, will make it crash even faster. All videos (online or otherwise) are hardware accelerated, and will usually cause a crash within a few minutes. This cannot be disabled or bypassed.
Computer 5 is a modest but modern piece of hardware, but it doesn't come with a mouse, track pad, track ball, touch screen, joystick, or any other type of pointing device - just a keyboard. The mouse cursor doesn't even show on your screen, and clicking links or interacting with other elements on websites can be a trial of patience. Using tab to cycle through elements can take a while on modern websites with hundreds of different components, and CTRL+F doesn't always find what you're looking for, such as if a link is wrapped around an image. Many games are unplayable... but hey, you can write, right?! Oh, and that keyboard? After years of overuse, many of the cheap rubber domes aren't up to par anymore, and keys sometimes stick for a second or two. Every hundred words or so, you end up with something that looks like ttttttttttttttttttttttthis.
Computer 6 has everything you need, but it is hopelessly overrun with viruses. Popups (both in a browser and on the desktop) are constant and numerous, and launching any application (including games) brings up a fake scam program instead of the actual software about 50% of the time. Popups and other annoyances often minimize the application you're working in, and prevent you from doing anything until closed. Occasionally the computer will crash and need to be restarted. Any attempt to remove the viruses, boot into BIOS, change OS settings, etc. immediately crashes the computer. There's absolutely no way to clean up the infection.
Computer 7 looks promising, but is permanently stuck in a different language. Once a day, the language changes to something else, and there's no way to fix it. Websites, programs that you install, etc. are all stuck in the same language. You can use translation software, but any attempts to auto-detect the source language do not work; you either need to recognize the language that's being displayed, or use trial and error to figure it out. To make things even more interesting, the keyboard is in braille, and the keys are not arranged in QWERTY, DVORAK, or any other common themes. The keyboard's layout, however, does not change.
Which do you choose?
Your ONLY form of regular entertainment is a computer. You are given a choice of which computer you want to use, but each has a fundamental flaw. You only have Internet access for one hour out of the entire day, and you are restricted from modifying the hardware or key software (installing a different OS, etc.).
Computer 1 is a Pentium II running Windows 95. The hardware and software are all from that general era (~1997). Since you only have Internet Explorer 2, many websites won't work or won't display properly. No patches or updates have been applied, or can be applied.
Computer 2 is an average modern big-box store machine. Everything is as you would expect it, except the 27" screen only goes up to 320x180 resolution. Nothing can fix this.
Computer 3 is another modern machine, and it has a high-resolution monitor - 2560x1440 pixels of glory. However, those pixels are all crammed into a tiny 2" screen. Holy DPI, Batman. It isn't a touch screen, and you can only use the basic text size adjustments and zooming built into Windows 7.
Computer 4 is a screaming i7 gaming machine with all of the best hardware. However, it overheats after running for around 20 minutes and immediately crashes every time. It needs a full 10 minutes to cool down before you can start it back up. No amount of extra ventilation or other tinkering can fix this problem. Launching anything that stresses components, such as a game, will make it crash even faster. All videos (online or otherwise) are hardware accelerated, and will usually cause a crash within a few minutes. This cannot be disabled or bypassed.
Computer 5 is a modest but modern piece of hardware, but it doesn't come with a mouse, track pad, track ball, touch screen, joystick, or any other type of pointing device - just a keyboard. The mouse cursor doesn't even show on your screen, and clicking links or interacting with other elements on websites can be a trial of patience. Using tab to cycle through elements can take a while on modern websites with hundreds of different components, and CTRL+F doesn't always find what you're looking for, such as if a link is wrapped around an image. Many games are unplayable... but hey, you can write, right?! Oh, and that keyboard? After years of overuse, many of the cheap rubber domes aren't up to par anymore, and keys sometimes stick for a second or two. Every hundred words or so, you end up with something that looks like ttttttttttttttttttttttthis.
Computer 6 has everything you need, but it is hopelessly overrun with viruses. Popups (both in a browser and on the desktop) are constant and numerous, and launching any application (including games) brings up a fake scam program instead of the actual software about 50% of the time. Popups and other annoyances often minimize the application you're working in, and prevent you from doing anything until closed. Occasionally the computer will crash and need to be restarted. Any attempt to remove the viruses, boot into BIOS, change OS settings, etc. immediately crashes the computer. There's absolutely no way to clean up the infection.
Computer 7 looks promising, but is permanently stuck in a different language. Once a day, the language changes to something else, and there's no way to fix it. Websites, programs that you install, etc. are all stuck in the same language. You can use translation software, but any attempts to auto-detect the source language do not work; you either need to recognize the language that's being displayed, or use trial and error to figure it out. To make things even more interesting, the keyboard is in braille, and the keys are not arranged in QWERTY, DVORAK, or any other common themes. The keyboard's layout, however, does not change.
Which do you choose?
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