it’s about time.
Thursday, November 10th, 2005
The other night my PC died. It had been trying to go for a long time, but I wouldn’t let it. This time it refused my strenuous attempts to bring it back. I bought it in February of 2001, and it has served me very well since. For a PC that was almost 5 years old, it was quite the performer. Very snappy and responsive, and took everything I threw at it with grace, including 200 MB PSD files.
I sort of wanted to upgrade and I sort of didn’t. My old machine worked fine… (until it died), and I didn’t see any good reason to drop hundreds of dollars on a new one. All I really use it for is web surfing, email and web design. The most torturous thing my PC’s go through is Photoshop by a long shot. I’m not much of a gamer, and on the occasions I want to play one, I usually head for the PS2 instead of the PC.
With that being said, Civilization 4 is out, and i *really* love that series of games. My old PC didn’t meet the minimum specs for the new version, so I haven’t bought it yet, but it was bugging me in the back of my mind. I broke down the other day and ordered all the parts for a new machine from Newegg. With next day shipping it came to around $809, which I think is a pretty fair deal for what I got. Athlon64 3000+, Asus A8N-E (S939), a gig of Corsair XMS, a WD 120GB SATA2.0 drive, a really nice Antec TruePower2 430 watt PSU, a DVD burner, and a beautiful CoolerMaster Cavalier 3 case. I skimped on the video card, since I’m not really into PC games, and got a Radeon X300SE 256MB. I actually considered buying something pre-built (for the first time ever), and called Dell. Not only was the customer service person I talked to Hispanic and very seriously lacking in the mastery of the english language department, but they quoted something like 600 bucks for a very low-end P4 system with zero bells and whistles and a proprietary case/psu. I’ll pass. I prefer AMD chips anyway.
The new PC is shockingly fast, and was the easiest build I’ve ever done. I put it all together and booted it, and everything worked perfectly. That’s a first for me. There’s always SOMETHING that’s borked at first, be it a dead component or a conflict or what have you. Not this time though, it was a very smooth and simple process. Here I am 4 hours later and XP is fully updated and patched, and I’ve got most of my basic stuff installed and configured. Still need to get the stuff off my old HD though. Maybe tomorrow. I’m quite happy with the purchase so far, and I hope it has the same staying power as my old one did.
The other night my PC died. It had been trying to go for a long time, but I wouldn’t let it. This time it refused my strenuous attempts to bring it back. I bought it in February of 2001, and it has served me very well since. For a PC that was almost 5 years old, it was quite the performer. Very snappy and responsive, and took everything I threw at it with grace, including 200 MB PSD files.
I sort of wanted to upgrade and I sort of didn’t. My old machine worked fine… (until it died), and I didn’t see any good reason to drop hundreds of dollars on a new one. All I really use it for is web surfing, email and web design. The most torturous thing my PC’s go through is Photoshop by a long shot. I’m not much of a gamer, and on the occasions I want to play one, I usually head for the PS2 instead of the PC.
With that being said, Civilization 4 is out, and i *really* love that series of games. My old PC didn’t meet the minimum specs for the new version, so I haven’t bought it yet, but it was bugging me in the back of my mind. I broke down the other day and ordered all the parts for a new machine from Newegg. With next day shipping it came to around $809, which I think is a pretty fair deal for what I got. Athlon64 3000+, Asus A8N-E (S939), a gig of Corsair XMS, a WD 120GB SATA2.0 drive, a really nice Antec TruePower2 430 watt PSU, a DVD burner, and a beautiful CoolerMaster Cavalier 3 case. I skimped on the video card, since I’m not really into PC games, and got a Radeon X300SE 256MB. I actually considered buying something pre-built (for the first time ever), and called Dell. Not only was the customer service person I talked to Hispanic and very seriously lacking in the mastery of the english language department, but they quoted something like 600 bucks for a very low-end P4 system with zero bells and whistles and a proprietary case/psu. I’ll pass. I prefer AMD chips anyway.
The new PC is shockingly fast, and was the easiest build I’ve ever done. I put it all together and booted it, and everything worked perfectly. That’s a first for me. There’s always SOMETHING that’s borked at first, be it a dead component or a conflict or what have you. Not this time though, it was a very smooth and simple process. Here I am 4 hours later and XP is fully updated and patched, and I’ve got most of my basic stuff installed and configured. Still need to get the stuff off my old HD though. Maybe tomorrow. I’m quite happy with the purchase so far, and I hope it has the same staying power as my old one did.