a bevy of computer parts on the way
Some assume that I, being as technically inclined as I am, think that I have the latest/greatest/bestest computer money could buy.
Wrong.
For the longest time I have been a seriously cheap-ass computer user and have no shame in admitting that. I hate spending money on computer stuff and always have.
How I got to be a cheap-o computer guy is that way back in the day I bought a Compaq Deskpro 6000 5200 (meaning Pentium 200MHz CPU) desktop - a "business" desktop PC. It came loaded with Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. Cost: $2,000. Oh yes, I was the type to put seriously good money into computers back then.
I was so proud of that box - at first. Then I quickly realized that NT 4.0 is a piece of crap as a desktop OS and should have went with Windows 98.
Then I discovered the CPU wasn't MMX-enabled so I couldn't play the latest games on it the way I wanted.
Then I discovered the optical drive that came with it was absolute crap. It was a seriously weird-ass thing. If I recall correctly, it would read normal CDs fine as any other optical drive would, but to write data it needed a special disc had to be put in this cartridge which I think if I'm not mistaken was DVD-RAM. If not it was something similar to it. All I know is that I never bought those writeable discs because they were ridiculously expensive back then.
After that experience I always went cheap or at best slightly-above-cheap and never looked back because I vowed never to get screwed like that again - and never have.
The upgrade
It has now come to the point where, once again, I have to upgrade. My hard drive, a Western Digital 250GB, operates perfectly, but it's almost three-and-a-half years old and been through some seriously heavy use. Hard drives usually don't start going wonky until around the four-year mark if you've been beating the crap out of it, but I'm being better safe than sorry here.
I am currently running Windows 7 in 32-bit because the maximum RAM my motherboard will support is 2GB - and that sucks. That needs to be upgraded so I can go 64. I do have the 64-bit DVD of 7, but can't use it because of my RAM limit.
I bit the bullet and decided to buy just about everything needed for the guts of a new computer.
This is the list of stuff I bought, with a total end price of $348.06, shipping included. I hated spending the money, but my computer is how I make my living so it's not like this was something I could put off. Anyway, here's the list:
- Gigabyte GA-EP43T-USB3 motherboard
- Arctic Silver Thermal Material Remover & Surface Purifier
- Lite-On DVD Burner
- Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive
- Rosewill RCX-Z775 80mm Sleeve Low Profile CPU Cooler
- Sunbeam PSU-BKS580 580W ATX Power Supply
- Mushkin Advanced Essentials 4GB (2 x 2GB) - bought twice for 8GB total
Now an explanation of each:
Motherboard
I purposely went with the 775 socket because I'm transferring my existing Core 2 Duo over to it. I also purposely chose this mobo because it has USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports, so when USB 3.0 stuff starts becoming available, I'll have the ports ready-to-use.
Side note: I'm shocked at how many Intel CPUs this mobo supports; the list is huge. Intel used the LGA 775 socket for a good long time (ever since Pentium 4 505!) and still does with the Core 2 line. That's cool.
Thermal Remover
Since I'm transferring the CPU from one board to another, there's going to be old thermal gunk from when I originally installed it. That needs to be removed proper before installing in the new mobo, otherwise there could be problems. I don't like problems.
DVD Burner
Speaking of problems, my existing DVD drive is flaking out. I swear, I wear out one of these every 9 to 18 months. Doesn't matter how little or how much I spend on an optical drive because it will bust, so I go cheap on purpose since it's going to break anyway in less than two years.
500GB hard drive
I figured as long as I was going to get a new primary HDD that I might as well go for a 500 gig'er. I actually do quite well with my existing 250GB, given its "limited" space. However, it's aging and needs to be relegated to storage-only so the OS can run happier on a new HDD.
Yes, I could have gone with a 1TB. I didn't because I don't need it, and all the reasonably priced HDDs of that size are 5400 RPM and not 7200. In other words, slow. I'm not putting 8 eff'ing gigs of RAM in my box only to have it bottlenecked by a slow HDD. And if you're wondering how much more you need to spend to get a decent 7200 RPM 1TB drive, the answer is around 25 to 35 dollars over the price of a comparable 500. That may not sound like much, but if you read the reviews for a 500GB compared to 1TB drives, you'll notice people have way better luck with the 500s.
Concerning the 2TB drives, it's $180 for a decent 7200 RPM. Nope. Too much. 500 is fine for me, speedy, and priced right.
CPU Cooler
The existing CPU cooler fan I have is the one that came with the CPU originally. As most people who build PCs know, the fan provided is adequate but just barely. The replacement fan is smaller and way, way quieter. It doesn't need to be pretty as long as it works, and I believe the one I bought will fit the bill nicely in that respect.
Power Supply
Based on the reviews for this product, I'm either going to get something that works like it's supposed to with nary a complaint, or it will be total crap. No in between about it. It's either going to be wonderful or suck complete ass.
Then again, almost everybody who wrote a bad review for it was trying to do things with their computer that this PSU simply cannot power properly. This PSU absolutely cannot handle the draw of an overclocked system, nor can it handle high-power stuff like big-ass video cards. If the system is "civilized", not overclocked and doesn't have a bunch of high-draw crap in it, the PSU should work out just fine.
If it turns out the PSU is crap, I'll just return it and get something else.
8 GIGS OF EFF'ING RAM, BABY
Even though I bought a mobo that supports 16GB RAM, I went with 8 that takes up all the banks. Why? Because I have a low-end Core 2 Duo. Besides which, when the time comes that I need 16GB RAM or more, I'll just buy a whole new computer. :)
The RAM is the kingpin of my setup. This is what allows me to go 64-bit properly, and even though it bothered me somewhat to pay what I did for it (133 bucks), last year this would have easily cost well over $200. I paid $16.63 per gig of RAM. It would have been nicer if it were $10 per gig (which it will be in 3rd quarter 2011 most likely), but 16.63 is way lower than it was when at roughly 30 bucks a gig - which was truly not that long ago.
It may sound like a waste to give a Core 2 Duo 8GB RAM, but it isn't. The lack of speed in PCs these days is not the processor's fault anymore and hasn't been for some time. In fact the biggest bottleneck is at the hard drive. That will be (mostly) eliminated when SSDs become affordable for everyone, but that's not going to happen for a while yet.
My stuff arrives tomorrow or Thursday. If it all works out the way I hope it does, having a rebuilt and significantly upgraded box for just under $350 is a good deal. Not the best deal, but it's the best I could do in the current market.
logan's run
For the past few years now I've been purposely seeking out movies I saw in my teens or younger years and re-watching them. Many of these were sci-fi flicks where as a kid I had absolutely no clue what was going on in the movie, but watched it anyway. One of these flicks was Logan's Run.
No Internet Exploder!
I think it's safe to say that Internet Explorer 8 is the last "bad" IE that will ever exist, because IE9 is pretty darned good. I've been using it off and on and it's definitely a good browser.
headbangers ball
In the '80s and '90s I was all about metal, although I never really dressed nor acted the part. Unofficially, it's par for the course that if you work in IT, you're a metalhead. I have no idea why this is, but it's pretty much guaranteed that in any IT dept. there's at least one guy who is.
It was magical at one point
There was a discussion on Reddit where a bunch of folks went nostalgic-extreme when someone posted the image of the Netscape loading-site image. There were several incarnations of the animation, but this is the one most people remember:
Just in case you have absolutely no clue what the above represents, here's a very quick stroll down memory lane concerning Internet browsers:
In the late 1990s the #1 most-used browser was Netscape Navigator. The above image, known as a "throbber", was at the top right of the web browser and animated whenever a web site was loading. It was called as such because the original Netscape "N" animation did in fact throb:
You saw the throbber a lot because you were using dial-up.
When Microsoft's Internet Explorer hit the scene version 3, it completely stomped Netscape. Stomped so hard it literally obliterated them off the face of the Internet - and that's the way it was up until Firefox in late 2004, which is in fact another Netscape. More on that in a moment.
Throbber images these days are now rings, seen within tabs. This actually makes sense in a multi-tab setup because you want to know which tab is loading something, if anything. Firefox has a dotted ring, IE has a solid ring and Chrome's is a "chasing" ring.
The reason the Netscape throbber was so cool was because whenever you went anywhere on the Internet, you'd see a starry night sky with shooting stars. It gave you a sense that you were doing something special, even if whatever you were doing was mundane at best.
I'm pretty sure the Netscape developers knew that since everyone that used the browser was going to wait whenever loading a web site, they might as well use a loading image that looks nice. No other browser since Netscape has had a loading image that looks as good.
I find people who pine for Netscape to be a bit on the foolish side, because Firefox essentially is Netscape. The Gecko layout engine used in Firefox now did originally come from the Netscape devs. What people really want is how Netscape looked. There are themes to make Firefox look like Netscape on Windows 3.1 or Netscape Communicator. There's also the Netscape 8 theme and more, so if you want Netscape, you can get it.
Even though using Netscape back in the day was kinda magical in a way, in reality the browser sucked. Believe me, people dumped Netscape for IE for a very good reason - it didn't crash nearly as much. NS was a crash-happy beast and always was. It was common to have to restart the browser over and over again every time it ran into even a tiny piece of JavaScript it couldn't "understand" well. IE on the other hand was extremely forgiving and was a godsend compared to NS.
I distinctly remember the first time I used IE 3.0 and noticed that things like HTML forms actually worked correctly, and thought, "Nice!" Yes there was a point where IE was the best choice as a browser - which may be revitalized with IE9 in 2011, but we'll see.
What Netscape 3 and 4 does for those that used Internet in those years is bring up memories when going online was way, way different. Strangely however (but maybe not?), Internet is reverting back to the way it was in the late 90s. Yes, I'm talking about Web 1.0. People are fast discovering that independent communities are the best kind. Blogs and forums have proven that easily. People are absolutely sick of social networking, because seeing the Internet as one huge community just doesn't work no matter what anyone says. The Internet is best experienced using separated independent destinations because it's far easier to take in compared to one big thing where you're just a drop in the ocean.
Maybe the magic is coming back. Who knows.
