INQUIRER wins in PC building competition

It put a heap of components and 30 journalists had to assemble them in the shortest possible time. The contest involved taking a case with the motherboard already in place, and putting in the rest of the parts.

You had to insert the floppy, HD, card reader, DVD and connect all the cables. Once you screwed the case together, plugged it all in, and hooked it up, the judges swarmed over you with cameras and lots of light. When it was deemed 'done', you won, or, in the case of the vast majority of people, you lost.

I showed up at the 60s theme event, with Rob Squires of AMDZone. Oki, the printer maker got us in, and we spent an hour or two chatting with the various journalists and vendors there. When the contest finally started an hour and a half later, it was over in almost no time, just over seven minutes. If you had any doubts, The INQUIRER squad rocked, beating number two by over two minutes. When that person was later disqualified, Rob 'Mr. Bellagio Party' Squires was promoted to second place. Someone else came in third, but since we can't find the page for the contest yet, we can't tell you who that was.

The first prize was $10,000 for the charity of your choice. I picked Wingspan Life Resources, and Rob took home $2,500 for his local school district. Add in the very nice TigerDirect PCs, and over $16,000 went to the charities.

The INQ would like to thank TigerDirect for this generous donation to a good cause, and we both look forward to winning again next year. µ