Serena is the name I gave to a desktop PC that I customised online and had built on my behalf by a computer retail store called Computer Lounge in 2013. At the time I was living in a caravan, had no established internet connection, very little free room or any of the required tools or hardware needed to easily build my own computer at home; so I just ordered this one online and got it built for me and then delivered. I had no regrets, that computer was awesome, especially at the time.
I had this computer all the way up to 2021 until it was stolen from me when someone burglarized my house whilst I was at work one day and took it along with numerous other things from around my house. It goes without saying that I ended up having a really bad day after getting home and realising that. Unfortunately, nothing was insured and the police were unable to gather any identifiable finger prints to figure out who was responsible, so I ended up just having to endure that loss.
The worst part was the loss of the backup drives that literally had years of files, documents, pictures, music, movies, software, games, ebooks, websites etc going all the way back to the late 90's. It was practically everything I had managed to archive over the years of using computers all the way back to when I was just a teenager. It was practically the greatest collection of digital memory that I had ever accumulated. I'm still to this day remembering specific things that I had archived only to realise it was on those backup drives and I'd more then likely never see any of that ever again. Including the things I had created myself, there was software and other things I had found online that are more or less impossible to find nowadays. More so because many of the original websites they came from no longer exist etc.
Just put this in perspective, for example; the official product page for the ASUS Sabertooth X79 product page no longer exists. It appears, if one waits long enough, even webpages eventually get lost in time.
Suffice to say, I now utilise cloud storage as an additional tier of backup to protect my important files. I had always prioritised physical backups over cloud storage as I had always considered the possibility of losing access to online archives to be far more likely then what I had in hand and was able to hold. Boy was I proven wrong. I've learnt now not to place all my digital eggs in one basket; as you could say. The games and movies etc lost on those drives, sure they could be replaced but there were documents and even archives of personal photos and video etc I had backed up of and for other family members. That was the worst of it to be fair. As the IT guy in my family I had taken up the responsibility to protect their data and I had failed. Whats worse is that I never utilised encryption of any type on any of the drives. I didn't really believe I had anything secret, or felt anything really needed to be hidden and I didn't want to complicate my data backup system, but it ultimately meant everything was open to those who stole those storage drives.
There was even confidential work related data that was on the PC itself. Nothing super secret, and I'm certain anyone who found it couldn't care less for the excel documents etc and probably just deleted them anyway, but I did fail in my responsibility to keep what I had stored sufficiently protected. I have since learnt from that mistake and now utilise disk encryption on all my computer storage devices where required.
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This is the first computer I had purchased that had a SSD drive. All my previous computers always had mechanical harddisks. I remember reading various articles at the time that warned of SSDs regarding their reliability and potentially short life spans; atleast in respect to HDDs. I actually got to experience this first hand, where the 480 GB data drive that came with this computer literally died within the first week of getting it. Luckily I hadn't got around to storing much of anything on it and was able to get it replaced via RMA. Trust me, that didn't instill confidence in my mind regarding SSDs and that mindset actually carried through until 2021. Every other storage device I got for that PC, both internal and external were HDD based. Though to be fair, the SSDs themselves after that soldiered on and didn't give me any further problems.
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This computer came with Windows 7. I wanted Windows 7 Professional as all my previous versions of Windows were always the standard/home equivalent. I also felt I needed the most customisable version of Windows that I felt supported my interest and knowledge around computers. I was also thinking of Linux at the time as well, I had intentions even when planning the purchase of this computer to install a version of Linux on it eventually. For the mean time though I considered that if I was going to stick with Windows for a while it may as well be the professional version of it.
I had Windows 7 up until I reached a point where I decided to upgrade to Windows 10. This wasn't immediate as I was very hesitant to upgrade, especially after reading about the horror stories people had with Windows 10 auto upgrading their computers apparently without permission and the compatibility issues etc that came from it. I had skipped Windows 8 entirely. I had read and seen enough of that OS on Youtube etc to know I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. I vowed to NEVER EVER install Windows 8 on that PC. I had the same mindset with Windows 10 initially too but if I remember correctly, a game or something game related (can't remember exactly) updated, or no longer supported Windows 7. This was after the free upgrade period to Windows 10 officially ended, but I did find out that though not advertised Microsoft was still honoring free upgrades from Windows 7. I ended with an upgraded installation of Windows 10 Professional owing to my Professional version key of Windows 7. That was pretty sweet.
Though I was developing an ever increasing distrust and resentment toward Microsoft and their obvious attempts to push Windows, its updates and their obvious maneuvers to take over more control of their customers computers at the core level, I was able to tolerate it to a degree as I also had an interest in and pursued the use of Linux further with this computer. I also required Windows for the occasional at home work related responsibilities from time to time so couldn't really give it up even if I wanted to.
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