The first machine I installed Linspire on that actually met the system requirements was a POC (Piece of Crap).

I received a damaged black and silver case from a supplier. It looked like someone had jumped up and down on top of this case. The front bezel had sheared completely off, the top had a massive dent in it, and the side panel had sheared a screw out of its hole stripping the threads.

UPS never comes to claim a damaged case under $50. So, even though the chassis was warped and the top was dented, I decided to use it to build a Linspire machine.

I put a window with a light-up green fan and a green cold cathode. I screwed the front bezel on with two screws (only 2 holes were left in the front bezel) and bent the case back into shape with the aid of a ball peen hammer. I installed a 15Gb hard drive, an Elitegroup K7SEM with a 1.3GHz Duron left over from a customer's total system upgrade, 512Mb PC133 SDRAM, a Hypermedia 24x burner that we got from a donated pile of junk, and a white floppy.

I then acquired a GeForce 4 MX440 and installed it. We then received another box of junk with a Gatway 12x DVD-ROM inside. It had a cracked cd tray which I glued back together and installed into the machine. It is a bit finicky, but it does work (I watched the Emipre Strikes Back on it yesterday. I then sprayed all the drives silver to match the case.

Linspire works beautifully on it and I am now considering replacing my W2K machine with this machine. The computer may be a POC, but it works and works better than my W2K machine built with new parts. What started out as a pile of junk has now become my favorite computer.

Do you have a favorite Linspire box?