my latest conspiracy theory

A few weeks back, we had a pretty extreme lightning storm which resulted in one fo my hard drives going bad. Fortunately, the drive was still under warranty and I had enough time to back everything up before it quit working altogether. From what my neighbors have been saying, lightning storms (and fried electronics) are a common occurrence in this area, so we are going to try and make a regular habit of unplugging our computers when they are not in use.

Unfortunately, protecting our PCs from random acts of God doesn't seem to be enough to keep them running efficiently. My wife's laptop is already acting very sluggish, and it is less than a year old. It has become our primary internet PC, which I suspect is the reason for it being so slow. I have already tried a memory upgrade, and I have installed the latest software and driver updates available. I removed unnecessary start-up programs and tweaked the performance and page file settings. I've got a good firewall, virus protection and anti-spyware software running, too. But nothing seems to help. So I have a new theory...

I am starting to believe that computer manufacturers use the internet to slowly make our computers obsolete. It sounds silly, but there is a reason why I think this is possible. I have another laptop that is about six years old now. Strangely enough, it functions flawlessly. All of the programs work, and it doesn't ever crash on me. It is as fast as the day that I bought it, too. What's my secret? It has never been connected to the internet. It isn't exposed to viruses and malware, and it doesn't get any of the "recommended" software updates that we see from Microsoft and the hardware manufacturers. So if these updates are so important, and they fix major problems with the OS, how can a laptop continue to run so well without them?

The major difference between my two laptops is that one is connected to the internet and the other is not. When I worked for a large telecom firm, I also noticed that the computers that didn't have access to the internet (or those that were restricted to intranet only) also ran better and lasted longer. Could it be that some of these software updates that claim to better protect our PCs from internet bad guys are actually bloated updates to make our computes run slower, to convince us that our systems are now obsolete, and therefore in need of replacement?