Lately it's become almost inescapable that you have to use an IBM clone for some tasks, and I've succombed, disastrous as they are. I also have regularly been asked to look at people's IBMs, and the best way to make money out of fixing other people's computers is to learn more about them, and the best way to learn is to own one.
So far, I've had a run of bad luck with the new IBM clone. It was virtually dead on arrival, and had to go back to the store two days later to try and solve various appalling hardware problems. So continuing my current trend of naming the computers, this one has been named Pandora, as it's been nothing but trouble ever since the box was opened.
Pandora has Windows 98SE, later Fedora Core Linux was added (dual boot), 450 MHz Pentium PIII, 512 megs of RAM, a 32 meg VDU card, an MPEG decoder card, DVD-ROM, CD-RW burner, an internal 56k modem, and a 17 inch VDU.