Vista System
Very neat. Along with the monitor you will also need a keyboard and a mouse. I am a big fan of the Logitech optical wheel mouse, and those new black minimalist keyboards from Dell look sweet, but I have no clue which flatscreen is the shizzle ... Skipper, any opinions? This looks like a PC that could go for 10 years before being obsolete. Sure would be nice to have the externals last that long too.
And, will there be a follow up article on installing Vista onto this bare naked new machine? Thinking back, all I’ve ever done is OS upgrades.
I like the idea of a $2000 PC I can slap together that will outperform most of the best machines I can buy preassembled.
Well, I did not have the bucks to build a system like that. Instead, I have a nice Dell 8300 (Duo 2.8 Pentium 4) that our shop tech thought had a bad mobo. I decided to see if I could make it work instead of seeing it go to the scrap heap. 1 power supply, hard drive and hdd cable later, it has worked perfect for 3 months now. Added 2 GB RAM, and it runs Vista Ultimate beautifully. Has a 256MB AGP card running 2 monitors and a 128MB PCI card running a 3rd monitor.
BTW, if you want to save a few bucks, you can purchase the upgrade and do a fresh install. The catch is that it will not register and activate since it is a fresh install. So, “upgrade” the fresh install and it will activate. If you are installing Ultimate like I did, the price difference was $245 vs. $400.
I actually have less than $500 in this thing. Nice to have a “dead” machine to bring back to life for free.
Monitor? You won’t believe this but you can spend $700 and not find a better monitor than this one. It’s the one I have and I’ve had it for three years with no problems whatsoever.
It’s the Planar PL2011M 21” LCD monitor with stereo speakers built in, dual analog/digital inputs, 1000:1 contrast ratio, 1600x1200 native mode, .255 dot pitch. The picture is absolutely gorgeous. I paid $650 three years ago but you can find it today for around $400.
Or you can pay $700 for an equivalent Samsung or Viewsonic and get the same thing.
Don’t forget speakers. I recommend the Logitech Z5300E 5.1 Dolby, six-speaker system. For $150 you can’t beat it.
I won’t go to Vista, you couldn’t pay me enough to put that pig on a computer.
I have 2000pro, on this machine, and it works perfect, and XP pro on my work machine, and it works perfect.
I will not put Vista on any machine, not for at least 18 months. And maybe not even then.
But if it ain’t broke, why fix it?
I wholeheartedly agree with the Jaguar! E-V-E-R-Y single time Bill Gates has foisted “improvements” on me I’ve struggled for hours at times [and frustrating email exchanges with so-called “Support"] to resolve—and not always fully resolved, either.
At the risk of getting flamed, allow me to suggest that the best use of that cash would be to purchase a Macintosh!
Posted by tremolux
04/08/2007 at 01:03 PM
Macintosh… the REAL computer. All others are just semi-legal ripoffs.
tremolux: I’m a MacAddict. You’re a MacAddict…
I’ve four Macs in the house. No Windows...none of the time…
Eeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww!
Macintosh users?!
Somebody fumigate the blog QUICK! Call Orkin!
We have insects in here.
In all honesty (and seriously) I would wait until September to start building a Vista system if I were all of you. Prices will drop, drivers will be more readily available, Service Pack 1 will be out with a ton of bug fixes and like Anon said, the video adapter market will have settled down after all the vendors catch up with Vista’s intense video hardware requirements.
Just my two-cents.
Macintosh users?!
Somebody fumigate the blog QUICK! Call Orkin!
We have insects in here.
Hmmm… sounds like a FARK Photoshop theme… I’ve booted it to Elric, and he’s booted to Lord Arioch…
FIE! A pox upon thy House Of Mac!
Where’s my D&D gear? We must slay the heretics!
Maybe Christopher and I could do a “Hi!I’m a PC! Hi! I’m a Mac!” video?
Bwah-hah-hah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha ...
Dang. I knew I should’ve kept quiet, Christopher. I guess some people still insist on suffering with last century’s technology. It’s almost as bad as speaking logic to a Democrat.
Posted by tremolux
04/08/2007 at 06:00 PM
Glad you spoke up tremolux, I’m now mulling the PC-Mac vid that the Skipper proposed. To be posted on YouTube of course.
If you’re going to go with 4GB of RAM you better install 64-bit Vista, which is currently having problems with drivers. Intel over AMD? Where do you get those figures, Anon? Why do you want to sacrifice storage and graphics to get a minimal increase in CPU power? Sorry. Does not compute.
Skipper I too have gone down the core2 path. I think AMD are in for a butt whipping from Intel for some time to come! From the figures I have seen the core2 processors and especially the quad cores (which hopefully) will come down in price, are significantly better than the AMD product. The main AMD advantage is price, but in raw performance I think Intel has the edge at the moment.
That said with the graphic card cpu combo you have there I can’t see you having any trouble running any games for some time to come!http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2007/03/26/the_gigahertz_battle_uk/
1) Intel came late to the game and jumped ahead - slightly, with the EM64 architecture but at this point Intel is only selling 64-bit chips for servers. AMD is not sitting on its laurels either. Look for significant advances in the processor arena this Fall.
2) 8800 graphics wasted? SLI all hype? Sorry, won’t wash. The system I’m proposing here needs a 20” or larger monitor at 1600x1200 or else support for dual-monitors. the newer nVidia video adapters really show the difference in that context. Why limit yourself to a small monitor and slow screen redraws. With the release of the 101.40 drivers (64-bit available also) nVidia dual-GPU’s are now enabled with full SLI mode. I know. I have a 7950 GX2 and trust me ... with 1GB of video RAM the difference is quantifiable. Microsoft Flight Simulator X flys smoothly with no jerking motions even with highest anti-aliasing set.
3) Yeah, install 4GB of RAM and only get to use 3.5GB of that? Reminds me of early PC’s with 1MB addressable space but only 640KB usable.
The compatibility issues you mention are gradually fading away. I have this very system already built like I have shown above except with 4GB of RAM and the 7950 GX2 instead of the newer 8800. In the last month I have received 64-bit drivers for my old Canon scanner, my USB-Bluetooth adapter, my keyboard and mouse and even my Blackberry-USB connection. I also have THREE 750GB drives because storage is never enough. Hehehe.
I have been running 64-bit vista on it since November and going through every performance test available, comparing it to a similar 32-bit Intel Windows XP workstation. There IS a difference, my friend. A big difference.
The point of this exercise is to get ahead of the power curve with a full 64-bit machine with enough graphics power, storage and speed to last at least five years without a need for hardware upgrade. Your suggestions only keep you hobbled to 32-bit architecture, slow graphics, not enough storage and a limitation on memory. Why? Are you just being cheap or afraid to take the plunge into the next generation of computing?
Nothing personal, I just wonder what your goal is with sticking with yesterday’s hardware. Is it software you’re worried about? If so, it’s catching up too. Vendors are already releasing 64-bit versions and some taking advantage of dual-core extensions. The PC world has always been in flux. That’s why I love doing this work. Cheer up! It’ll get better. (NOT)
What a nightmare. Hey Christopher, did you know that all macs have the Intel Core 2 Duo processor, except for the Mac Pro and Xserve that have Xeons - up to 8 cores? Did you know that mac architecture is already 64-bit? that OS X 10.5 (coming next month) is full 64-bit? that there are no viruses or spyware on the mac OS? that the mac can run all flavors of Windows (including Vista) natively (if you must) as well as linux - but is the only computer that can run OS X, the most advanced of the bunch? Why anyone would continue to suffer with the nightmare that microsoft has created is beyond me.
Posted by tremolux
04/09/2007 at 02:29 PM
04/09/2007 at 05:22 AM
