The PC I have now is largely the result of an unsolicited loan offer from Wells Fargo they sent during my first months in Austin by myself. This was 2000 and the computer I had at the time was a Dell several years past its prime. I bought a Monarch full-tower Athlon system and have been tinkering with it ever since. It last went through a major overhaul in 2002 when I replaced the motherboard, processor, and RAM with faster components. Unfortunately, better hardware can only compensate creaking and infected software to a certain point. I'm also sick of full tower systems. My needs don't encompass six 5" external drive bays and 35+ pounds of steel.
It is now time to start from scratch. As an early Christmas gift, my father donated some money to help finance my final purchase. I fired off this order to NewEgg.com last Friday:
Though I've been a tech geek for more than a decade and have purchased or picked out more than 5 pre-built systems for friends and family (all Dells), I've never actually bought all the individual components and put the whole thing together on my own. I'm only familar with XP from using the computers at work. I've also got a few dozen gigs of photos, video, and MP3s to transfer. Challenges that seem like good things to blog.
Besides, I gotta get away from politics for a while.
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I have that case. It's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Seriously, my studio speakers eminate more sound than that case. The dvd drive is louder. My xbox is louder. I can hear the refrigerator over the computer, and that's when I'm in the studio.
... btw, good luck with your project. $50 bucks says it doesn't go as smoothly as you would hope.
Posted by: The Flamingo King on December 14, 2005 11:04 AMYeah, the Sonata II had good comments everywhere I looked. Picking the case was one of the hardest choices I made. Like I told you last time you were down, I want to stick the PC in the desk cubby made for it but most of the mid-tower cases I browsed were deeper than the 18" the desk allows. I didn't want some gleaming, rackety, script-kiddy neon monstrosity and though the price on the II is a bit of a premium, the features should add up over time.
$50 says XP pukes upon initial hard drive detection! I've heard conflicting reports that XP likes SATA hard drives during O/S installation. I went by Fry's last night as kind of a "reviewing the battlefield" moment and bought the 2nd edition of O'Reilly's Windows XP Hacks as a preemptive strike against Redmond (and Chas) stupidity.
The mail guy just said UPS made their delivery today. Next mail drop is at 1:30. I feel giddy.
Posted by: Drizz on December 14, 2005 11:30 AMI doubt you will have the trouble with XP that you think - however you may find it is dumbed down to the max. The internet has some wonderful guides on how to strip all the excess crap away and make it look like good ol' windows again, if that's the way you like.
Personally I can't stand the XP clown college interface design. Everything is so bubbly and round, I can't take it. I need hard angles!!! Gimme good old classic mode any day.
I'll be down in a week, maybe less. We can talk shop, maybe fix any lagging errors you may still have by then :) Call me sometime and let me know what your work schedule is like over the break.
Posted by: The Flamingo King on December 14, 2005 04:59 PMThe first thing I did when WinXP Pro was installed on my machine at work was dump the cutsy shit and go straight back to the classic Win98 GUI.
I'll be in touch about next week.
Posted by: Drizz on December 15, 2005 11:18 AM