Let's start with two weeks ago, when one of my hard drives on my main computer manages to crash. It starts making a "clicking" sound, and that's it - nothing can read it any more.
So I replace it and restore the latest backup I have. All that I've lost are newer versions of various installers and some downloaded movie trailers and whatnot. Not a massively big deal.
Last week I finally decide it's time to assemble a new computer. My existing computer is at least three years old and parts are starting to fail. (It's still got a dead DVD drive in it.) Order the parts, wait for them to ship, receive them, assemble them, discover the power supply I ordered won't work with the motherboard, visit local computer stores until I find one that does, and finally assemble and boot up the computer.
Some time after installing Vista Ultimate, I discover that the video card makes a "buzzing" noise when running. Contact the vendor's customer support, and they suggest I return it for a replacement. So as of today, the video card is being shipped back to be replaced. Not surprisingly, a computer without a video card isn't amazingly useful.
Which isn't a terribly big problem, as I've still got my old computer. Boot it up, and then a half-hour after starting, Explorer crashes. Hard. Eventually everything just goes down and it locks up.
Reboot. Big black screen of nothing.
Fine. Load the Recovery Console, fix the boot record. Reboot.
"Disk Read Error: Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to reboot."
So now neither computer I own actually works.
Great.