lucashinch

Who among us hasn’t been so frustrated with their computer that they wanted to, uh, troubleshoot it with a volley of white-hot lead? “According to the Colorado Springs Police Department, officers responding last night to a 911 call about shots fired discovered that a ‘fed up’ Lucas Hinch took his computer into a back alley and ‘fired 8 shots into the computer with a handgun, effectively disabling it.’” We’d guess the problem wasn’t so much with the Dell hardware as it was . . .

with the technological wonder that is Microsoft’s operating system.

When asked about the shooting, Hinch told TSG, “I just had it,” adding that he tired of the balky computer’s “blue screen of death.” Hinch said that he whacked the computer with a 9mm Hi-Point pistol recently purchased from a Craigslist seller. The gun was seized by police, who left the computer behind.

The late Dell XPS 410 model, seen in the above police evidence photo, is survived by a monitor and a keyboard.

Windows Vista claims another one. No wonder so many Redmond-based moguls support gun control.

While we sympathize with Hinch’s frustration, plugging your processor within city limits is a misdemeanor in Colorado Springs. While he’s certainly earned his IGOTD honors, we’d suggest that next time he either hauls his hardware out to an appropriate range before opening fire or buys better gear from the get go.

 

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57 COMMENTS

    • Being as I live in this town, I see A LOT of hi points. Almost every time I go to my LGS there’s one guy buying one. Then, when I see someone open carrying, it’s with a hi point, in a nice $5 uncle mikes nylon “universal” holster.

    • Non-sarcastically satisfied Windows 8 user here. Some of us *do* actually exist! I think it’s just hard for some less tech-savvy folk to wrap their heads around

  5. They talked about this story on Good Morning America.
    What irritated me the most was the way the anchors laughed and joked about it as though it were cute.
    These same anchors who have been pounding the disarmament drum since the 1980’s.

    The same fools who want gun control think some moron pumping rounds into a PC in his home is laugh out loud funny.

    • My thoughts also!! I guess its OK for a smelly hippie to do something like that, but someone else defends themselves and its wrong….

  6. His defense to the crime of shooting a computer with a Hi-Point is that he didn’t have a 12 gauge.

    I’d say he’s looking at a complete dismissal of all charges.

      • My experience with Hi-Points leads me to believe you’ll get the same number of bullets out the front that you put in the magazine.

        Seriously, I don’t get all the Hi-Point hate. They’re heavy, ugly, low capacity, inexpensive, and they run. Conversely, I’ve seen plenty of people at the range cussing while attempting to clear jams on their Kimbers and Sigs.

  11. I can sympathize. I once beat a copy of the NES game “Super Contra” to death with a brick.

    UUDDLRLRBAstart THAT, sucka!

    • I just used a Game Genie, but I agree you’re gonna have to beat it with something either way.

  12. I work on Dells.

    I used to have a pile in my garage of the infamous Optiplex GX280’s for when I went to the range.

    Tough little buggers, but with an array of arms, they were obliterated on a regular basis.

    Current favorite targets? iPads…

  13. Talk about shooting shit with shit. XPS’ sucked. Had all kinds of problems, but everyone loved them because they were “so small, they could fit in my purse”. Yay. And high point’s quality goes without saying.

  14. Thanks lucas. Idiot. Woobs! Colorado????? ‘Splains a lot, Sluggish Jpg’s + high in the Colorado Rockies= gun control fodder.

  16. Buying an Apple computer is like spending $1100 on a Glock 17 with the takedown lever welded in place. It’s a nice piece and it’ll work just great… right up until it stops working or you want to make an upgrade, and then you have to go buy a new one.

    And if you really think neither of those products ever has issues or needs repair, then congratulations: you’ve been suckered by clever marketing.

    • All of my Mac’s have always worked great, and have been very easy to upgrade when the time came around. In fact, I upgraded the computer I’m typing this on a few months ago. I changed out the internal 1TB HDD for a 1TB SSD and boosted the RAM up to 24GB. It’s also possible to overclock them if you know what you’re doing. That is, if you’re in to that sort of thing.

  17. I’m a bit offended that the alternate suggestion to one proprietary operating system is another that is bundled with an even more locked down environment to include hardware. That answer should be freedom instead:

    https://www.debian.org/

    No need to shoot the computer when you can simply install a free (as in freedom) operating system.

  18. Other than for poor taste in hardware, why was the pistol confiscated? They don’t confiscate your car when you commit a vehicular misdemeanor do they?

  19. The dude bought a Dell, and wished he didn’t.

    All my PCs are DIYs built from tier-1 manufacturer parts. Reliability has been rock solid on all of them, ans if something needs to be repaired or upgraded, standardized off-the-shelf parts make it easy.

    My favourite PC destruction tool would be the 8mm Mauser firing factory Turkish ammo. 154g FMJs @ 2960 fps make short work of a problem PC.

  20. To be serious tho, all factory computers deserve an immediate transplant of quality power supply, that’s generally where the weak point is for factory computers. Computer with shitty power supply is like a person with high and low blood pressure at the same time. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
    They need to make sure the computer kills itself over time.

    Back to the topic….. My hi-point is more reliable than any computers i’ve ever seen.

    • Agreed I have had 3 Dells violate their meager 250W factor power supplies. Thumbs down on Seagate HDs also committing disc-cide without warning.

      Double plus thumbs to the 12-gauge suggestion up above; I have a 12 year old Dell waiting for me to purchase a scatter gun to dispatch it most righteously.

  22. i can’t say much, did the same thing to a PS3 that failed and a PIX firewall. only difference is i live outside city limits.

  23. When my office finally had to junk our Windows XP machines I formatted all the hard drives, removed them and the “kineticly destroyed” them with an AR15. That was fun!

  26. Guys sometimes I want to shoot my computer when I’m on the buggy TTAG site. Probably runs the worst of any regular site I visit. And we’re loaded with anti-virus/spam ware etc. So I get this guy with the working Hi-point…

  29. I can tell I’m getting old, because my first response to seeing his picture above was, “Get a job!”

  32. This guy looks like that Hippie character in ‘King of the Hill’.

    Pious self-righteous Holier-than-Thou P.O.S. that you just *know* your gonna read about one day snapping like a rubber band…

    And then they do.

    Oh, Visa B.S.O.D.?

    There but for the grace of…

  33. Weird ponytail, but it looks like a sort’a nice guitar (if you like a venetian cutaway, I don’t.).

    What’s a homeopath? Do I really want to know???

  34. I had a laptop (Acer) running Windows XP that was so unreliable I had to use the start up disks every day just to do anything. After a while I “tripped over the power cord” and smashed it to bits. The insurance lady said the same thing happened to her! I bought an Apple iMac with the payout, and I am still using it 8 years later. It is unfailingly reliable. I have made some upgrades and I use MacKeeper antivirus to keep it clean. I don’t understand the resistance to Apple products, my Microsoft experience has been an unrelieved nightmare every time. I have an XP netbook to remind me how bad Windows still is. I can’t update to the latest OS, otherwise I have no problems with the iMac.

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