Yesterday I spent much of the late-afternoon and evening buying and then setting up a new computer. I operate on the Moore’s Law principle — every 18 months I need a new computer that is at least twice as fast as my “old” computer, at the same price.
This time around it took a lot less than 18 months. I replaced my underperforming 450mhz PIII with its lowly 17 gig hard drive with an Athlon 900mhz machine with a 45 gig hard drive. The only areas I skimped on performance were going with 128mb RAM rather than 256 — have to add that later. I also installed an ATI 32mb All-In-Wonder rather than the $350 GE Force card I’d been wanting. The appeal of moderate 3D acceleration along with the audio/video in/out options on the ATI was too much to pass up for only $100. I’ve just got to route my cable wire up to my den so I can start recording Babylon 5 when it hits the SciFi channel starting Monday (subjectively, btw, I seem to be getting 3D frame rates at 1,024 x 768 on the ATI card that I was getting from my TNT2/32 at 800 x 600 which is more than adequate for my 3D needs).
I also added a 19-inch Trinitron monitor, which was a big improvement over the bottom of the barrel 17″ monitor I’d been using.