PC Hardware, What have you got Options

[CosmicRocker]

Thank you, Nico. I really do appreciate your comment. Ouch! Even your low-end selection is quite expensive for my dream, dual wide desktop. ...back to the drawing board...

...and I too, would like to hear from others.

edited to correct a grammatical error. I really hate those.

[Bill Harris]

From 1993 to 2004 I used a state-of-the-art 486 with 32Mb memory and a 256 Mb hard drive. It died and/or software became hard to get so I upgraded to a off-the-rack Dell with a fast processor, lot's of memory and a huge hard drive. I'm not sure what it's got but I'll dig around and add it to this post.

"Back then", my 'puter was hand-assembled with the best of the best components. Since then my priorities changed and nowadays it's easier to buy something usable and replace every couple of years.

How times have changed.

--Bill

[helvick]

I've noticed that the trend here seems to somewhat reflect my own history. I've had a PC of one sort or another since 1988 upgrading on the fly but my current desktop is a highly modified Dell that has had hdd, cpu, graphics card and lan adaptor upgrades since it was bought 18 months ago.

However my employer has seen fit to provide me with an IBM T43p and it is just so nice to use that I find I rarely use my desktop anymore for anything apart from mass storage. It's got a 1600x1200 resolution display which is the loveliest monitor I've ever used. A good desktop still beats it hands down in terms of performance and storage but I don't spend enough time doing that level of heavy number crunching for that to matter to me any more.

[jrdahlman]

While everyone else is talking about how big and fast their computers are, the computer I end up using the most is this:




A 1997 Toshiba Libretto 50CT: plain Pentium processor at a whopping 75 mHz! It has been beefed up: doubled its memory to 32 Meg, and replaced the standard 750MB drive with a 6-gig one (that barely fits in the case). It's even been upgraded to Windows 98 from 95. And it's way smaller than a laptop.

You see, while I certainly have more powerful machines at home and work, I rarely get to use them. My mornings are spent watching our son, while my work in the evenings forbids anything but company software on their computers. So I end up doing most of my own work with this little thing on the train. (When I'm not snoring due to the babysitting, that is.)

Too slow, you say? Even an old computer can seem fast if you don't mind being 5-10 years behind the times in software. For graphics processing, I use Paint Shop Pro version 4 and sometimes 5, as well as a simple batch processor called PicLab. I can use the NASA PDS file viewer, and Img2Png runs fine, if slowly. Of course, it works just fine for typing in pixel values into a spreadsheet. (Did anybody notice my Excel files were for version 5?) It has no hope of running Midnight Mars Browser or Photoshop (well, maybe Photoshop 2), but I don't expect it to.

I first saw this gadget on display in an electronics store years ago. So small, but a "real" Windows (not Windows CE!) computer. I dreamed, but it was over a thousand dollars at the time. Fortunately, wait a few years and what was thousands then just turns into a few hundred on Ebay. Finally sprang for it from an auction a few years ago. (This model goes for only $50-$100 now, so I've stocked up on spare parts.)

Toshiba actually still makes modern Librettos in Japan, but they were never a big hit in the U.S., so you can't get them here anymore.

[djellison]

I HAVE ONE OF THOSE...

It's sort of retired now, but it was used for lap-timing on Scalextric racing

Doug

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

My PCs

I like to have one machine with broad usability. I play games like World of Warcraft and Half-Life2, but I also do C++ development and run heavy number-crunching programs and ray tracers.

Currently I have a dual Opteron system. AMD seems to offer better math performance with lower heat production and energy consumption. I'm running Windows XP x64, which lets me address large memories. I installed 8 GB of ram, but now I wish I had put in 16. Not many commercial apps use that memory, but my own C++ programs easily consume that much.

My philosophy is to replace my computer when I think I can get a new one that is 4 times faster, so I tend to get several years of good use out of a machine. Then I spend the bucks on a bleeding-edge system. I'm more conservative about video cards, because I know a lot of people who have reliability problems when they by the fastest-clocked products. I've got an ATI X800 XL, which is considered fairly modest, but it runs the above-mentioned video games at 1920 x 1200 with no trouble.

[Bob Shaw]

I HAVE ONE OF THOSE...

It's sort of retired now, but it was used for lap-timing on Scalextric racing

Doug

Doug:

I have a couple... ...the 50 is put away in the basement, but I still use my Libretto 70CT (64Mb RAM, 233Mhz, 20Gb HD) with a GPS card in a PCMCIA adapter and Autoroute and it's *still* a joy. It also gets used for photo slideshows, and is *always* assumed to be a cutting-edge bit of hardware! And it has astronomy software on it, too...

I'm still trying to get OpenGEM to run on my trusty old Sharp PC-3100 palmtop... ...just to prove I can.

Bob Shaw