I recently decided to get my share of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s fiscal stimulus investment allowance bonus — I bought a new computer.
Now, regular readers of this blog (hah! I don’t think there is anyone in that category, but I have plenty of passers-by — where was I? ohh yes …) will think that I am incapable of doing anything other than whinging about things, but that is not so!
I bought this computer from Computer Alliance. This PC is my primary business machine, but I based the system on the Computer Alliance bottom of the range gaming machine, which is better than their top of the range business PC, and then specified a few options. I liked the way that I could select a base machine, and then choose a few options and upgrade bits and pieces easily on the Computer Alliance web site. The resulting computer is:
- Intel S775 Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16GHz CPU
- ASUS S775 P5QL-SE Core 2 motherboard
- DDR2 4GB Corsair 800MHz PC6400 RAM TwinX kit
- internal all-in-1 memory card reader black
- 500GB Seagate 7200rpm 16M serial ATA HDD
- 1TB Western Digital EADS 7200rpm 32M SATA HDD
- Gigabyte 9600GT 512M PCIe video card
- 23″ Acer X233HB LCD monitor
- CoolerMaster Centurion 5 case
- Microsoft Wired Desktop 600 keyboard and mouse
- Pioneer DVR-216BK 20x DVD DL burner SATA black
- Creative X-Fi Xtreme audio sound card PCIe
- Logitech Z2300 THX speaker system
- Logitech S5500 QuickCam
- integrated gigabit network connection
- MS Windows Vista Business 32bit
- MS Office 2007 Small Business Edition.
This PC runs really nicely. I have had a few teething problems, but nothing that can not be sorted out. I know that 2GB RAM is the sweet spot for Vista, and I have been told that I probably do not need the sound card as the onboard one is quite sufficient, but what the heck. Mr Rudd has kindly helped me out, so I may as well spend some money!
Now that I have used Vista on a relatively fast PC, I am a bit of a fan. I like the user interface, and everything seems to work nicely. It is not that much of a leap from my XP machine after all.
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