Mustek Media Tour
To celebrate its 25th year of business, Mustek hosted a #BuildYourOwnPC media event at its head office in Midrand yesterday.
Mustek is the largest assembler and distributor of PCs in South Africa. We were given a tour of the assembly line and I gotta say, hats off to those who work there, which is mostly female (60%-40% split).
On a normal 8am-5pm day, about 400-500 PCs are made, and it takes about an hour and ten minutes per machine. If need be, they can more than double that capacity. I spoke to a few ladies during the tour, and all of them said they love what they do; and most of them have been around for years (one started 25 years ago!).
Then it was our turn. To start off, we were given electrostatic discharge jackets and bootstraps. We received sealed boxes with our names on it, sort of like a lucky dip, filled with components. I was most excited to find a solid state drive in mine ;)
It was very much a hands-on experience of learning, undoing and redoing. The end result was a Core i5 machine with 4GB of RAM, a 60GB solid state drive, 500GB hard drive, Windows 7 Professional, MS office kit, and a 20″ monitor.
In the past I’ve fiddled with individual bits of a machine but today was the first time I put one together. It was loads of fun!
Comments
DIY
I love DIY and working with my hands 
and hate reading a manual :P
Serious Geek Porn
I've been a nerd all my life, and even after working in the local ICT industry for about 7 years, there's still not many things that come close to the fun in building a new machine. Except the smell of a new motherboard. (Ok, maybe that's just weird. Forget I said it.) And honestly, receiving a box full of spiffy new components, with your name on, sounds a lot like the Toys-R-Us trolley races every kid used to dream about. Oh yeah, and it's pretty awesome that there are so many women in that line of work. PC's built with love, and now a real reason to refer to your PC in the female form. So when's the next birthday? 
yes
It was exactly like a Toys-R-Us trolley race
Drool
I love the smell of new components in the morning. As a veteran of almost 20 years of building all kinds of computers I must say one thing - I am green with envy! Only one question : Did the computer take its usual blood sacrafice and bite you? It is my experience that the job is not properly done unless some damn thing nicks you and there are smears of your blood on the case.
nicks
A little skin scraped off my thumb which was no big deal... definitely no blood smears!
Love Bites
Drool,
I know exactly what you are talking about. Especially the newer cases nowadays, razor sharp edges inside..
It really is blood, sweat and tears (of joy) building a machine.
Member Login
Most Popular Blogs
Digital Blogs
General Blogs
Wow!
You PC-building machine, you! (*Ahem*, the irony isn't lost on me, Apple Fan Girl.) Kidding aside, though, I'm seriously impressed! I am TERRIBLE with my hands. Whenever I tried assembling IKEA furniture while living in the States, I always, rather mysteriously, ended up with extra screws and other important looking bits...
I also think it totally rocks that there are so many womenfolk working there!