Saturday, January 26, 2002

My desktop PC died last night. It's a long and tedious story, and I sort of (but not quite) blame myself. I wasn't entirely sorry to see it go, though--it had been growing arthritic and erratic in its middle age. After mulling over what to do (buy retail? go mail order? avoid buying a new system?) and doing some online shopping, I ended up buying a Compaq Presario 8000 today at Circuit City. (My inclination is to buy mail order, but I had a lot of projects in midstream and didn't want to wait.) The most interesting thing about this PC: It has a gigabyte of RAM, which is eight times more than the old system and so much more than my first PC (a 16KB TRS-80) that my head hurts just thinking of doing the math. (It's also a lot of memory even today, especially since RAM prices have begun to climb again--this seemed to be the last 1GB-RAM PC available on the eastern seaboard, at least at a reasonable price.) It also has a snazzy and cost-effective Athlon XP-1800 CPU and a 100GB hard drive, and I hope it's the last PC I buy for a very long time or until something really cool and really cheap appears--whichever comes first. So far, it seems like a good, solid machine. It's also the only machine I saw today at any retailer with a grown-up simple white case, not a Playskool-style one seemingly designed to appeal to four year-olds.

Anyhow, none of this should have any impact on the site--my backups are now safe and sound on my new hard drive.
posted by Harry 11:57 PM