Nick Sabalausky wrote:
- Graphics card that's pixel shader v1 (was a pre-pixel-shader GeForceMX 2
for a long time, only upgraded because I found this one for about $40 and
wanted to play around with pixel shaders).
I don't have a graphics card because of heat/fan/noise.
- The motherboard's USB is v1.x
So's mine, and that really sucks. I'm going to get a card with 2.0 on
it. USB is a home run, kudos to the designers of it.
- 21" CRT I got from a CompUSA store-closing for $25. (Funny thing is, this
was made years ago and goes higher than HD resolution and has no native
resolution, good contrast, no ghosting, no realistic risk of burn-in, and
zero frames of "image processing" delay. Silly people and their
hundreds/thousands-of-dollars LCD/Plasma/DLP HDTVs ;) ) I can't hang it on
the wall, but what do I care? My desk's big enough.
I'm not with you there. I hated that gigantic leaden monster on my desk,
and was happy to upgrade it to a sleek lcd.
So, yea, about on par with you two. (Although I do have damn near a TB of HD
space and still crave more...yea, I'm a packrat.) The only thing about it
that I feel is insufficient is the number of PCI ports (it's one of those
reduced-size motherboards...in a non-reduced-size case), but I'm still
getting by.
I do some occasional video processing/editing, 3D stuff (mainly to learn
it), and gaming (but nothing like Gears of War or Halo or anything like
that, besides I prefer to game on a living-room console). If I were to get
really serious about any of those things, I would probably want a new
system, but I don't do enough of them to really justify it.
I tried video editing, it's a no-go on my system. Not even close.
I would kind of like the convenience of a laptop (mine's dead), but the only
reason I'd be interested in the fancier CPUs on that is for the reduced
heat/power consumption.
Speaking of laptops, if anyone hears about a company that makes quality
laptops with an actual built-in trackball, let me know. I can't stand those
awful touchpads or IBM's "nubs", and dragging around a real trackball in
addition to power cord, etc, starts taking away from the whole "portability"
thing.
I bought an eee pc, as in a laptop I'm interested in portability, not
desktop replacement.
One other funny anecdote about "newer/trendier is not always better": I've
been recruited by a friend of my mom to replace/supplement her small
business's wireless network with a wired one.
When my house was built, I wired up every room with 2 cat5's and 2 RG6
coaxes (had to do it myself, as the electrician had no idea how to
install it). I had no use for it at the time (10 years ago) but these
days it's fantastic to have. I keep finding more and more uses for it,
and just ordered another hub for all the new stuff. I plan on rewiring
my distribution panel to make it look more professional rather than a
plate of spaghetti <g>.
