Business / Technology

Hopefully I won’t be the last one this year:

Tiger Direct, a Florida-based online PC vendor that bought CompUSA, annually hosts the race with about 30 journalists racing to see who can assemble a barebones PC kit the fastest. The company then reassembles the systems and donates them to youth-oriented charities, and donates $10,000 to the winner’s chosen charity.

Last night’s winner was Al Hernandez, who builds PCs for Fox News: He assembled the high-end, AMD Phenom II quad-core system in 5 minutes and 59 seconds.

I had the system together and turned on the power in about 10 minutes, but the video display wasn’t getting a signal. After futzing by me and the Tiger Direct techs, they said the video card was bad or broken. One of the techs tried to console me by noting that at least I didn’t break the (1.5 terabyte) hard drive like the guy behind me. They also said the card would be replaced and the system tested before they send it to Seattle’s Technology Access Foundation.