(no subject)

[luckykaa]

Funny isn't it. How when I spend a long time between entires I seem to have nothing to say. Has nothing happened?

Well, no... Not really.

I've had a week off work. I was looking forward to having the place to myself. Sadly, I wasn't in on Monday, Flatmate was ill and so in on Tuesday and Wedensday, other flatmate was ill on Thursday and Friday, and third flatmate is at home doing his dissertation. Bloody students.

I spent a lot of this time waiting for passports and getting my own game engine to behave. After spending way too long trying to work out where a ray hits a landscape (Basic operation is easy. Optimisation is hard), I've finally got all the collisions detection I ever expect to need working. So it's time for a hiatus while I contemplate my next move.

My passport arrived on Tuesday. While I was in. Seems the delivery guy didn't want to disturb me though, so didn't knock too loud. Wednesday it was actually delivered.

I also have a nice shiny new credit card, 0% interest free credit and a £2400 limit. I really should buy something with this. My computer needs an upgrade. Perhaps I could buy a laptop or one of those cute little Mac minis, but really a new main PC appeals. I just need to decide what to buy.

Those shuttle cases are rather tasty, but a new motherboard and processor is a much cheaper option and I can always buy the case at a later date. So I think I'll probably be looking at a AMD 3200. Rather annoyingly, the less you pay for a CPU, the better the price/performance ratio. So on that basis, the slowest chip is the best. Also I'm a bit concerned about XP's activation complaining, although I'm told that it shouldn't be a problem. So I guess the bits I should buy are an AMD Athlon (who the hell comes up with these crappy names?) a reasonable quality motherboard and a gig of RAM. Now I just need to find a justification to buy it. It's not like I'm a big gamer after all.

Comments

[vanir.livejournal.com]

The shuttle cases are nice and compact, but difficult for certain upgrades (disks, CDs and expansion cards easy, RAM, CPU and PSU involve dismantling the whole thing which is time consuming).

I run an old (32 bit stylee) Athlon 3200+ and that's still going fine so I expect the 64-bit versions will do fine. Athlon isn't the silliest name, it is the section of Decathlon and Pentathlon that means field or track events. So it sounds athletic, and as the hip is all about performance that makes sense. More than Xeon, Alpha or Itanium, but less than Pentium or Power. Certainly more accessible to the general public than numbers.

I also have a Mac mini (middle version) and am happy with that. It fits in with my living room AV equipment nicely as it is small, silver and quiet and iTunes makes a nice replacement for a hifi, plus I can surf the net in my living room. Only far more expenisve PCs would be as quiet. Also there are far fewer known OS X exploits. The mac infrared remote control is a waste of time and money as it doesn't work on the OS as a whole but just the iLife programs (DVD, music, etc.) and needs line of sight, unlike the bluetooth keyboards and wireless mice you can buy.

I also hope you have enough funds to pay off the credit as the interest on most credit cards is higher than most other forms of loan.

[luckykaa.livejournal.com]

I have enough funds to pay for this right now. I've never had negative net finances in my life and don't plan to start now.

Actually, Athlon is only a slightly silly name. Sempron and Celeron were the really dumb names that sound like Simper and Celery.

I'll be holding off on the shuttle case for now. It's pretty but I can get one later.

[vanir.livejournal.com]

The shuttle case is actually a barebones system, so it comes with it's own motherboard, so if you hold off but think you might want it later, you'll be replacing both motherboard and case (and PSU). I think the limited expansion room and the fact that many graphics cards take up two slots and need lots of cooling are the main drawbacks of shuttle or other small form factor cases. Some shuttle boards have the graphics slot on the outer edge so you can't put two slot graphics cards in them.