So my home computer has been giving me all kinds of trouble lately. It has this nasty habit of spontaneously rebooting, sometimes several times in a row. Occasionally it gives me an error (BSOD) but mostly not. Can’t figure out if it’s hardware or software (I suspect a bit of both). It’s also getting a bit long in the tooth - Athlon XP 2000 (1.6ghz), 80GB HD, 768MB RAM, Radeon 9600XT video card, etc. It will run things okay but is seeming sluggish ever since I got that 2.8ghz machine at the day job. I was so frustrated I almost dropped a grand or so on an HP at Staples last week because I didn’t want to mess with it. But then I researched HP and they pretty much suck. So I’m back to building my own again, but I wanted a kit deal to save money and hassle.

So, I finally saw a barebones kit on TigerDirect.com that I liked: Intel 3.2ghz Dual Core Pentium D, 320GB HD, 16x DL DVD�RW, 1GB DDR2 PC4200, Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Case, 500 Watt Power Supply. That should make Photoshop perform pretty snappy, eh?

Then I jumped over to Arstechnica.com and looked at their build-up guide and picked up their recommendation for a PCI Express video card. That should make Half-Lif… er, I mean Photoshop, perform pretty snappy, eh?

When I get my $185 worth of rebates (off the $900 total bill) I’ll pick up Windows XP Pro and maybe another 1GB stick of RAM.

I’ve been wanting to defect to Apple but I just can’t get as good a machine for the money, and Mac OSX just isn’t worth the extra premium. If my business generates the same revenue next year perhaps I’ll get a Macbook or Macbook Pro.

So I’ve gone through the rebuild process on my home PC again, formatting my OS partition and reloading Windows2kPro. The weird thing is that this time it didn’t recognize my network adapter and it didn’t automatically configure my sound, like it did last time. Not sure what changed. Once I upgraded to SP4, things started working a little more smoothly.

Anyway, one of the biggest headaches always was installing Microsoft Office. Not only did it take forever to install, it took forever to patch. That’s because I have the dinosaur that is Office97 (got it in an online auction about 7 years ago for $25 - this was before ebay). So I decided to bag that shite and give OpenOffice a try. I only need basic word processing and spreadsheet functionality at home. What a pleasant surprise. The entire suite installed very quick, and so far the programs run very fast on my machine. Looks like that’s one less hook Microsoft has in me. I would leave Windows behind completely in favor of Linux if it weren’t for Photoshop and some of the games I play (Half-Life2, etc.). (Yeah, yeah, yeah, dual-boot machine, yada, yada, yada, whatever…)

Overall I’m being much more picky about what I install. For example, I’m not installing the full suite of DVD tools, just the “recorder” software for playing DVDs. I usually watch TV series DVDs (right now: “Scrubs”) on my computer and feature films on my TV. Also, Firefox 1.5 is da bomb. I’ve easily got over 20 extensions installed, including the one I’m using to type this blog entry, Performancing. The new Javascript Console shows CSS errors, too. Cooooooool…

Next I’m going to install Ruby on Rails and play with some basic web application development. I’ve been watching some demo movies and playing with this Ruby in your browser site. Looks pretty straightforward. I should be able to extrapolate my meager knowledge of PHP and other languages to Ruby.

Well the buzz is finally wearing off so I better go to bed. This post got way longer than I anticipated. Happy new year and all that shite.

Remove Icons from your System Tray Neato.

Tips for Recycling Your Computer I’m starting to accumulate more old computers than I have any use for. Eventually I’ll get it through my thick skull that it’s time to let them go. I mean, how many back up PCs does one person need?

Tactiva � Introducing the TactaPad This is really cool (check out the demo movies), but I wonder if it does anything to alleviate repetitive stress syndrome.