As a Gen Z, it seems like I'm required to make my whole life revolve around one thing, to the point of insanity and well beyond. That's why if you search "Acer Aspire T180", you'll find that the amount of posts mentioning this Vista-era mini-tower has essentially doubled since the day I joined the forums.

Why do I love a PC made nearly 2 decades ago by a system integrator known for their poor build quality so much? Can you still live with a computer from the days when people hadn't even started watching Fast and Furious movies just because of how cheesy they were yet? Perhaps most importantly, if I'm really a Gen Z, how the hell have I not started using "Acer Aspire" as a pronoun or something stupid like that? All these questions and more won't be answered in this post, because I learned the hard way that this site doesn't have an option to save drafts of blogs, meaning the answers are lost forever. Whoops...

I'm not going to go over the history of this thing as a whole, because it's the same as the history of any OEM PC that wasn't made by Apple. In other words: it's a computer with a chassis used since the 1990s, and slightly more modern I/O than its predecessor, and it was replaced after about 2 years by a computer with a chassis used since the 1990s and slightly more modern I/O than its predecessor. Instead, I'll give you a quick history of the one sitting on my desk:

12/26/2006: Aspire T180 number 57,227 rolled off the assembly line, doomed to become the computer I'd tear apart numerous times.

3/(UNKNOWN)/2007: My family buys this thing after our XP tower blows up. As the computer shipped with Windows Vista (which introduced child safety features), my parents finally felt comfortable with letting my 2-year-old self learn to use a computer for the first time later that year.

4/11/2017: Windows Vista reaches end of support, but my family decides to keep using the computer for the few things we still used it for. By this point, the computer is still has all the same parts it shipped with, although a 2 GB stick of memory had been added since then.

6/25/2018: Firefox, the last major browser that still supports Windows XP and Vista, no longer supports Windows XP and Vista. This is when the computer was finally unplugged and left to collect dust in the closet.

NOTE: I think it's worth mentioning that even though its single-core Athlon 64 3500+ had trouble in its later days trying to load modern webpages, the T180 was able to run Windows Vista flawlessly. I genuinely believe that most of the hate towards Vista was just a result of the mob effect.

3/30/2020: The computer is finally taken out of storage, but only so I can make parodies of all those screencast tutorials. It's at this point that I've started feeling confident enough that I'm willing to see what can be done as far as upgrades go. As I would later find out, you can do quite a lot.

Just a year later, in March of 2021, I was ordering the first replacement parts: a Corsair power supply (yup, the OEM PSU had somehow not done what old OEM PSUs are known for) and a SanDisk SSD. After spending nearly a week routing cables the way I wanted, I decided to temporarily install Windows 7 so I could make sure everything worked. I did a bit more research, and found out that there was a single BIOS update released during this thing's lifespan, which added support for the best Athlon CPUs of the time, such as the Athlon 64 X2 6000+. I had never updated a legacy BIOS before, so naturally, I was nervous. The fact that there was only ever one update released for the thing made me nervous too.

It turns out I was right to be worried, because I had just bricked it, despite everything seemingly going perfectly fine during the flashing process. And just like that, it was farewell to the T180 as it was hauled off to the e-recycler.

Just kidding! Of course the fact that this thing is so old is what ended up saving its ass. The BIOS chip is a socketed PLCC chip, so it was a simple matter of buying a new chip, removing the old one with a bent paperclip, and popping in the new one, which was pre-programmed with the 2007 revision of the firmware. I almost couldn't believe it when I saw the Windows 7 boot screen again, and it made me wonder how much worse this could've gone if it was any newer. After that, I installed an Athlon 64 6000+ which I only paid 22 dollars for, and replaced the block of aluminum with an actual cooler, leaving me with one big problem.

You see, I really wanted to use 8 gigabytes of memory with this thing, but it seemed like everyone else who had tried either couldn't get it to POST or completely bricked their BIOS. Part of me thought these people had maybe not updated the BIOS and that it would work just fine for me, but the other half was basically screaming HOLY SHIT, DO YOU WANT TO HAVE TO GO THROUGH THIS AGAIN?? ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY? the whole time. I decided to order some sketchy AliExpress DDR2 sticks with warranty seals on the packaging, like the penny-pincher I am.

Here's how this part went:

1. I got the RAM in the mail after almost 2 months. Contrary to what you might expect from AliExpress, the box actually had the RAM I ordered in it rather than a small weight and a note reading "hope you get out of poverty soon."
2. I voided the RAM's warranty by opening the plastic packaging, and installed it.
3. I connected the BIOS reset jumper, just out of caution.
4. I booted it up. By this time, I had decided to install Windows 10 on the T180, so I was extremely relieved to see the Windows 10 boot screen again after an upgrade I wasn't even sure was possible, considering the lack of succesful 8GB upgrades online.

With how much you can do to upgrade this thing, I feel like it would make a great system for those on a budget who want to run DX9 and DX10 games on period-correct hardware, as long as you look for a used one locally rather than pay Core i7 OptiPlex money for one on eBay, although this isn't why I use mine. It may sound strange considering it's a computer from 2006 made by Acer, the Wal-Mart desk fan of system integrator build quality, but it's my go-to device because I just want a computer that I know will start up every time, which I can't trust any of my laptops to do. Sure, I also have more modern components housed in a Meshify C, but the hardware in that build is overclocked, so I'm still not always entirely sure every time I press its power button.

It may not be able to do many things today, but it runs Windows 10, plays YouTube videos reasonably well, and most importantly, is there when I need it most. That's why I use it. However, I've recently noticed that one of the capacitors is starting to list to one side like a Russian trawler coming back from protected fishing waters, meaning the rubber on the underside is starting to bulge out. It seems that as reliable as it is, my T180's days of being so perfect may be numbered.