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Because I'm tired and bored and crap, and because some of this is pretty cool, I thought I'd take a sec to tell you guys about the new computer we're getting.
See, the family desktop, which resides in the kitchen, is getting old. It was the spiffy new super-computer I bought back when I was in college and anticipated needing something really butt-kickingly awesome to run advanced engineering CAD programs. It's served us well over the years, but has been getting progressively slower as more up-to-date programs require more and more of its ever-more-obsolete resources.
Still, it's held on for 8 years, twice what I'd consider the normal lifespan of a comp like this.
Now it's time to upgrade. (Sorry, Dave. I'll miss you.*)
I'm currently working on loading up the external hard drive with whatever files we might want to keep on hand.
The new comp, which should be arriving in the next day or two, is from Dell. It has some very spiffy features. (As Dave here demonstrates so well, if you spiff it out from the beginning, it'll last longer, thus saving you over the long run.) I looked around at Dell's Home and Small Business options and found some sweet upgrades.
1. Intel Quad Core processor. I didn't even know those existed. This is awesome. Four CPUs, each running at over 2ghz, working together. It's beautiful.
2. Win XP Pro. Yes, if you look carefully, Dell still offers the option to upgrade from Vista.
3. North American-based tech support. Hard to find, but it turns out that if you go with the Optiplex line for Small Business, you can upgrade for something like $70 for 3 years. It's weird. It seems kind of wrong to have to pay for it. But... wow. People who speak English! And who actually know the systems and software instead of reading it all off of pre-written scripts and FAQs! Actual tech support.** It's almost mind-blowing. And for what works out to be a really low price, too!
This should be exciting.
Hmm. But what do I name it...?
*My last few comps - up until my current personal laptop, Jimmy (named for Superman's Pal, of course) - have been named DV-5, after a robot from Isaac Asimov's story, Catch That Rabbit, which can be found in the anthology I, Robot, now a badly-mangled action thriller starring Will Smith. DV-5, called Dave by his beta testers, was an experimental mining robot who would have fits of insanity whenever he was called upon to multi-task.
**At least, I'm assuming that's how it works. If it turns out that the people on the other end of the line are actually Spanish-speaking illegal immigrants with minimal training, I'll be very disappointed...
See, the family desktop, which resides in the kitchen, is getting old. It was the spiffy new super-computer I bought back when I was in college and anticipated needing something really butt-kickingly awesome to run advanced engineering CAD programs. It's served us well over the years, but has been getting progressively slower as more up-to-date programs require more and more of its ever-more-obsolete resources.
Still, it's held on for 8 years, twice what I'd consider the normal lifespan of a comp like this.
Now it's time to upgrade. (Sorry, Dave. I'll miss you.*)
I'm currently working on loading up the external hard drive with whatever files we might want to keep on hand.
The new comp, which should be arriving in the next day or two, is from Dell. It has some very spiffy features. (As Dave here demonstrates so well, if you spiff it out from the beginning, it'll last longer, thus saving you over the long run.) I looked around at Dell's Home and Small Business options and found some sweet upgrades.
1. Intel Quad Core processor. I didn't even know those existed. This is awesome. Four CPUs, each running at over 2ghz, working together. It's beautiful.
2. Win XP Pro. Yes, if you look carefully, Dell still offers the option to upgrade from Vista.
3. North American-based tech support. Hard to find, but it turns out that if you go with the Optiplex line for Small Business, you can upgrade for something like $70 for 3 years. It's weird. It seems kind of wrong to have to pay for it. But... wow. People who speak English! And who actually know the systems and software instead of reading it all off of pre-written scripts and FAQs! Actual tech support.** It's almost mind-blowing. And for what works out to be a really low price, too!
This should be exciting.
Hmm. But what do I name it...?
*My last few comps - up until my current personal laptop, Jimmy (named for Superman's Pal, of course) - have been named DV-5, after a robot from Isaac Asimov's story, Catch That Rabbit, which can be found in the anthology I, Robot, now a badly-mangled action thriller starring Will Smith. DV-5, called Dave by his beta testers, was an experimental mining robot who would have fits of insanity whenever he was called upon to multi-task.
**At least, I'm assuming that's how it works. If it turns out that the people on the other end of the line are actually Spanish-speaking illegal immigrants with minimal training, I'll be very disappointed...