This is the part I hate the most...

I had to buy a new motherboard today... along with, of course, a new CPU, power supply, and video card. My old motherboard died, probably in the Northbridge (problems with memory and USB, strangely enough...)

So $600 later, I'm now at the part of the upgrade I hate most: sitting, waiting for XP to install, so I can get to the mind-numbing part: re-installing the server and developer applications that I need to do my job.

So I sit and wait... and read the forums. Boy, some people have too much time on their hands, don't they?

I used to live in that world. Now I purchase Apple hardware with extended AppleCare protection. If something goes wrong, they'll fix it for free. It's like owning a nice car where you can just bring it to the dealer and they'll take care of it.

I know. You're going to mention price and something about the software you need to do your job. Let me preemptively retort that my time is worth more than the extra cost for the hardware and AppleCare and that with an Intel processor soon one will be able to run those other applications.

~Ulrika~

Paiiiiin

I just get nice geeky boys to fix it for me.
Guess that's not as effctive for you geeky boys, is it, Doc?

I came REAL close to getting a Mac Mini yesterday. If it were about $200 less, I probably would have done it.

Even extended warranty repair can't get my machine back to the way I like it - at any price. I just am going to have to suffer through a day of re-configuring.

And in all, this computer has been ultra-reliable... it wasn't really the hardware's fault that it's been 110º lately and the AC in my office stopped working - sending the temp up to around 140 or so at one point. No chipset fan can compete with that kind of heat. One of my hard drives is now doing that little "reset" thing every once in a while, too.

My power supply has the coolest dang thing on it... a watt-meter!!

Yep, there's a little analog gauge that slips in to the floppy bay that shows the wattage being drawn.

It's currently rock-solid at 100 watts. So why, I ask you, do I need a 550 watt power supply?

Have you tried shooting it with a DU missle?

No, but I thought about smacking it with a hammer.

Seriously: let's not spill the politico/religious threads over to other stuff. Feeding trolls should only be done in controlled environments.

post of the week!

Dr is getting schooled.

~Ulrika~

Big deal. If we go by Linden time --I can only party about it for another 15 minutes

LOL... I love the new Windows autorun. It decided my SATA drive was a newly-connected portable drive and tried to play it in Media Center.

Whee.... now I get to configure a PCI-e video card. Let's see how that goes...

Noooooooo! Keep that white phosphorous away from my mac mini --I beg you!!!

its been awhile since the 3 of us combatted evil together

im pretty sure im done for... but it was a nice breath of old times

but nostalgia aint what it used to be

i nominate Fmeh Tagore to fill my vacant spot when LL retaliates against me for spilling pretty boy phils beans when monday rolls around

he sees through the bullshit and seems very close to balancing legitimate points of an arguement and mocking the blowhard ignorant jingoists

be well, and, sorry, gotta say it, God Bless

1. The 3D circuits of the video card will draw more power when you start up a 3D app.

2. More storage devices and USB devices

3. Factor of safety. A 550 watter is less likely to fail from overheat since it's running cooler.

4. Pimping

D00d! With the new CPU fan and PSU fan, this thing is SO much quieter!! Nice!!

I know, I know. I used to build and sell PC's for a living, and I can't tell you how many systems I built in uATX cases - with 185 watt power supplies. For my own estimates, I always used 100 watts as a baseline for PC power draw, and it appears I was right.

we'll see what the little gauge says when I get 3DMark running tomorrow.


and... WOW... the 40 MB Forceware file downloaded in less time than it took to write this post!!

If SL lags for you so help me.

I feel your pain.. I think it was the CPU in my old pc that died, but a funny
slow death it had... It had been cold.. And heres the thing. The cold made it
not work! I had to heat the damn thing up with a hair dryer, then it would work.
get to cold.. it shuts off.. At first I though it was thermal contraction/expansion lifted off a lead. Still dono what was wrong.

but $700 later I got a better pc anyways. (except I got all you had to get, plus memory too)

Thank God that my memory was up to date. Although, if I had gotten the dual PCI-e board, I would have had to buy DDR-2.

Yeah!! Dual monitor support is back.

Now let's get SL loaded and see how it does.
Desktop: Athlon 3800, 64 bit. Geforce 7600 256MB. 1GB DDR400 RAM
Notebook: P4 2.8. Radeon Mobility X600 128MB. 1.25GB RAM.

Now let's see how the two do....
(hehe... SL downloaded in 34 seconds. Cox is smokin' tonight!)

Interesting. With as close as possible to the same view, and similar resolution (my desktop does 1400x1050 and my notebook is 1440x960), my notebook has stabilized at around 24 fps. My desktop is running about 27-30.

Not much of a difference there for a machine that's got 1/3 more CPU horsepower a much better video adapter.

up in my skybox, the FPS is higher... 38-39 on the notebook. 46-47 on the desktop. (Anything over 30, I consider gravy. In fact, I prefer to set FPS caps to 30 if a program will let me do it. No sense in wasting clock cycles on rendering that my eye doesn't even see.

OOh... interesting tidbit. I can use the AVater Vertex program on my nVidia card. Too bad it makes my avatar black and non-mouseable on both of my ATI's (speaking of which, anybody want to buy an almost-new Radeon 9600 with 256MB RAM?)

I went in and set the video settings on the notebook to the same as the desktop... FPS went down to about 35 indoors.

Oh, and my wattage draw? Still sitting still at 100. so in an attempt to see if I can make the GPU actually do some work, I'll go find 3D mark.

more coming up... (yes, I'm truly this bored.)

Did I mention that Windows Activation is stuck on the "Checking for connectivity" page?

ugh.

(yeah, I know, Ulrika...Macs don't do that, either).


Okay. Got THAT done. Yes, Mr Software Nazi, I paid for this copy.

now what's next?

Next? Lol!!

chipset drivers
video drivers
soundcard drivers
windows updates, all 1000.. reboots required.
antivirus(if any) + update
firewall(if any) + update
Every single peice of software you own
+ updates
restore data you (hopefully) backed up.

And + 100 other things you wont remember till you need it yesterday

oh, great.

my DVR software won't use my tuner card now. Worked two days ago.

arrgh. I hope the card isn't damaged

2 Words: Water Cooling.

OR- if you have the $$$ to spend: Phase-Change Cooling!!! Quite pricey, but hey, it costs a bit to have a refrigerator cooling your PC stuff (like around $800-$1000)

Either way they have one basic benefit: QUIET

Here is some unsolicited advice to get your machine running as efficiently as possible:

DON'T use Norton as your antivirus program, and don't use firewall software--if you want a firewall, get a router and free up your processor. The reason I speak against Norton is because their software is

1. Intrusive
2. Bloatware to extremes
3. A processor hog
4. A memory hog
5. Hard to get rid of completely should you decide to uninstall

And don't even get me started on Norton Internet Security suite--it slows down one's computer like AOL does.

I recommend, if you can get a hold of it, the enterprise edition of McAffee antivirus, or AVG free edition--they're non-intrusive, they don't take much memory or processor time, and they uninstall in a breeze if you decide you don't want them later.

I also highly recommend Spybot Search and Destroy as the main anti-spyware software, with settings for downloading beta versions of the definitions checked in the advanced options.

If you aren't on a business network, have a router as your firewall, and don't plan on having someone work on your computer remotely (except for AOL users, which makes these services REQUIRED to run), I also recommend going to services.msc and disabling Remote Access Auto Connection Manager, Remote Access Connection Manager, Remote Desktop Help Session Manager, Remote Registry, Routing and Remote Access, Security Center, Themes (themes is useless fluff that, although it may be very little on the processor, still takes up extra processing time), and Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing. I personally also disable Telephony and Telnet because I don't use either of them.

If you want to take it even further in disabling services, and you're using a router and everything's working fine as far as your connection, go to a command line and type "ipconfig -all", then keep that window open, go to your local area network connection properties, go to properties for internet protocol, and enter the values manually that are in the shell from ipconfig instead of using automatic settings, then go back to services.msc and disable dhcp and dns.