Why computers suck

The last week or so in sequence:

1. The computer turns itself off one day for no apparent good reason (not a blackout).
2. It refuses to boot up again (Windows XP here). The file system is corrupted.
3. System restore doesn't work.
4. Neither does chkdsk or fsck or anything else I have on hand.
   
5. Hard drive recovery is $$.
6. Luckily I have a spare hard drive in a drawer somewhere. So I'll store the current drive safely away until I (we) decide what to do with it. I install the spare drive.
7. It's only 4 GB. What does it have on it?
8. Oh, an installation of Linux that also doesn't boot, inexplicably.
9. Yaay, I still have some Linux distro discs lying around, I'll try installing them.
10. Still won't boot.
11. Well, a friend is coming up in a few days. I'll ask her to bring her XP cd with her.
12. She does so. I install XP.
13. XP boots, eventually. Oh, it's vanilla XP, not even SP1. Dang. My modem driver requires SP1 at least.
14. I figure out a way to trick the modem driver install into thinking I have SP1, get online, then actually get SP1.
15. Run out of disk space installing updates.
16. Hmm... tweek the system a bit. Get a few hundred meg free space.
17. Install more updates. Now I have SP2.
18. Try installing useful programs, don't get many before running out of disk space.
19. Tweek the system some more. Still not much space.
20. Wait... I can use my USB memory stick as a (very slow) external hard drive!
    
21. Now I have an office suite and web browser and some space for storage.
22. The computer is usable for most things, although every few minutes I invariably get a "Critically Low Disk Space" warning. All of my old documents are gone, or, more precisely, on another hard drive with a fragged filesystem.
23. Crossing fingers for a new hard drive (or new computer? *crosses harder*) this Christmas.