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Building ComputersI got tired of all the special drivers and patches needed to keep the generic "white box" components functioning with the several Dell and Gateway computers I owned over the years. So, I've been building my last several computers from the motherboard up and selected the brand name components I wanted. Yes it is more expensive than a generic box, but you get exactly want you want with no compromises. For example, when I upgraded my computer a couple years ago, I selected the AMD Athlon 64 processor to take advantage of the 400MHz bus and stuffed a pair of 74Gb Western Digital Raptors running at 10,000rpm. I also decided to invest a couple bucks in a decent monitor, so I found a great deal on a Samsung 19" LCD flat screen at Newegg.com to gain a better view. It may not be the latest and greatest for speed, but it served it's purpose as a stable system that performed to my satisfaction on a limited budget.
Mistake #476 - Beta was better I installed Windows Vista Business after successfully testing the Beta version of Windows Vista for 6 months and all it does is crash. There is a brief message of a hardware driver conflict, but I think I have every conceivable piece of hardware disabled in the device manager and it runs all of 3 minutes before the BSOD. The system is only stable in safe mode or, of course, running with a Bart PE CD-ROM as the OS. I looked into the crystal ball and I see XP SP3 for this machine as I have no immediate need for a boat anchor.
Maxtor no more I just had two Maxtor SATA drives fail with just about two years of service with the same symptoms - DOA on boot with no system or Maxblast disk recognition leaving the heads clicking like a dying fish flopping on the ground. My pair of Western Digital Raptor 74Gb at 10,000 rpm are still running smoothly on my server, but I thought I would try a pair of Seagate Barracuda's in my new system with the Perpendicular Recording Technology.
I also have been using Microsoft Office 2007 for over a year and am totally convinced it is a much better package than the 2003 version. Other than that I rely on Windows XP SP3 with Office 2003 SP2 for my home office.
Current Hardware AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester 2.2GHz Socket 939 Dual Core Processor ASUS A8N-SLI Premium 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard CORSAIR XMS 1GB TWINX1024C2PT (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Plextor PX-708A DVD burner (old but serves it's purpose) Gigabite 7600GT GV-NX76T256D-RH R Pair Western Digital 74Gb 10,000 RPM SBC DSL Antec SX1030 performance series case with newer Antec SL-350 ATX12V 350W Teac Floppy (worthless piece of junk)
Current Hardware AMD Opteron 165 Denmark 1.8GHz Socket 939 Dual Core Processor ASUS X-Mars Heat Pipes CPU Light Cooler ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 ATX AMD Motherboard CORSAIR XMS 2GB TWINX2048C2PT (2 x 1024MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Sony NEC Optiarc 18X DVD±R Black DVD Burner with 12X DVD-RAM Write x SATA Gigabite 7600GT GV-NX76T256D-RH R I liked the first one so well, I got another on sale before they were obsoleted. Pair Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s SBC DSL Antec SX1030 performance series case with new Antec SmartPower 2.0 SP-500 ATX12V 500W Sony Floppy (I use CD's mostly for drivers)
Software Apple Quicktime 7.1.3 CutePDF Printer JV16 Power Tools 2007 Microsoft FrontPage 2003 Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Microsoft Office 2007 Pro Nikon Capture NX Powertoys for Windows XP Symantic Antivirus 10.2.0.276 Symantec Partition Magic 8.0 Winzip 8.1 (the free one) WS_FTP95_LE (old but works perfectly) Windows Media Player 11
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