| | Well, thankfully UPS delivered it last night, of course the courier didn't even ring the door bell... if I hadn't gone outside to take out the trash just as I saw the truck rounding the corner, I wouldn't have known it was here...
This part was supposed to solve the problem I have been having which is random restarts/crashes if you will, I thought it was a PSU problem since I replaced the RAM already and did a memtest on the ram, it came out completely clean. The PSU was still stock and getting to 8 years old, but apparently that wasn't the problem either as I doubled the PSU power with this new one and I'm still getting crashes. I just dropped another little bit on a new processor, just $10 with free shipping. This is why I don't mind buying a couple generations old...I'm running windows XP just fine and most of the upgrades for the hardware are $25 or less. The power supply was a touch more, but after rebate fits. I had to pocket $50 up front though (free shipping was nice, saved me $10-15 since its heavy), and a rebate of $30, but that takes 2-3 MONTHS to process  . It would be one thing if it was through someone other than the manufacturer or the seller, but when its either of those, it should be an instant rebate, or processed within a month...oh well, the company seemed good about rebates according to all the reviews, I'll just have to wait.
If it still crashes with the new processor, I'm going to have to assume its the motherboard, which I can probably get for $10-15 after shipping, but by then I think I might as well be upgrading that to a 470-socket (P4) computer which would actually be a HUGE upgrade.
Speaking of computers, I recently downloaded a beta (or is it still in alpha stage) or Windows next release Windows 7.0 (or just Win7). Let me tell you, if you hate Vista, you will LOVE win7. I installed it already on my pentium4 machine (a machine mind you from 2003 or even 2002) and it is BLAZING. Windows failed miserably with Vista, but Win7 is the osX of windows. Whats best is you can upgrade your old computers, I'm going to try the Celeron machine when the new CPU comes, and if a 1.4ghz machine with 512mb ram can handle it, I'm almost tempted to try it on a 286  (j/k).
It seems windows is really good about this though, they release 2 good or decent systems and then come out with a huge flop trying to do too much. 95 and 98 were decent OS's, they didn't bog down a lot and ran programs nicely, then they had ME, you will never hear anyone speak highly of ME. So they recovered with Windows 2000 (or Win2k as I call it) and it was a terrific OS (based on the WinNT which is great in itself) and followed that up with XP. Win2k was so good, not only am I still using it, Shell corporate is still using as well as a slew of other companies. (more on that below), so then they FLOPPED with Vista despite telling everyone its a success, yeah in THEIR pockets. so expect 2 good operating systems in a row, first Win7 and then whatever they want to call win8 (or 8.1 like they did with XP or vista).
Shell is stupid though, they are upgrading to vista which means they probably won't upgrade to Win7. Vista is a stupid move because A) win7 is less than 12 months from launch (most are expecting it before christmas), B) they have to upgrade ALL of the their computers for vista where Win7 would've handled just fine on the computers they have, C) their IT department can't even do what they need on Vista, so they aren't able to teach their employees. During one of their intros to vista for the employees, my wife asked a task they do almost daily, heck almost hourly, and the tech took 20 minutes to find out he didn't know how to do it. the next meeting, he told them its impossible to do what they needed and they would need to find a new way to do it...they are also having to wait more than 6 months to drop vista to all the computers in the building simply because they can't get it to interface with their network like win2k is doing now. they got a handful of computers, but the security from vista is limiting them.
ARG, Vista frustrates me. why can't microsoft just out and say, "we messed up more than with the zune and the 360. This is yet another project we forced out the door prior to finishing it, and our service packs haven't been able to fix the issues we thought". Finally, steve ballmer (new CEO of Microsoft) came out and told companies its ok to not upgrade to vista if they haven't already, meaning he has admitted its fault.
Well, sorry for the computer rant, like I said its my most recent hobby addiction and I've taken to it like a pig to mud. I used to really like apple simply because my dad told me to, and my brother who majored in computers in college raves about them. After my own research, I am very much so a windows fan (or more so linux fan), simply because its easier to interface with it, Mac has limited itself from so much software and although you can make most work with linux, its just that much more user friendly on a windows. The biggest thing I have learned though, build your own machine...You can build a machine that dell sells for $550 for ~$150 (minus operating system, which with winXP will run you another $100).
hmmm, have to leave you with something interesting after this dull computer nerd talk:
I'll mix some history with some "fantasy", If Hitler didn't die and the axis had a chance to rule the world rather than the allies, do you think the US would've been easily overthrown. take into consideration our separation from the rest of the world (you have to cross an ocean on either side), and if the americas (canada as well as south america) was independent from communist rule, do you believe we would be able to spread democracy like we are doing now?
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| | Posted 1/8/2009 3:14 PM - 18 Views - 2 eProps - 2 comments
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