So, every good geek has to post a list of PCs and other related gear, plus some past goodies, right? Now, while I started writing this, I realized that I do not know all the specs by heart anymore. This is weird, am I losing my geekdom? Will their revoke my dork-card?
And another not less shameful thing is that the last two machines are actually store-bought machines. After about 6 years of DIY PC building, we bought the last two PCs at BestBuy. Before, we got most parts at GPC Computers on 28th Street (now on 29th Street), but when I was looking for a Core 2 Duo, getting all the parts would have cost me much more. Now I am a little disappointed, because it seems like the E6300 has a lot of headroom for overclocking but I can't do diddly-squat with the Gateway/Intel motherboard.
Main PC |
|
| This one is for the every day stuff but also the newest and most powerful one. |
Gateway Core 2 Duo E6300 1 GB DDR RAM 2 * 250 GB SATA drive 16x DVD-RW |
| This gets around 8.6 fps (1-Pass) on encoding 1080i HDTV to 720p x264 content using MeGUI. With moderate overclocking, I could probably get up to 12 fps. And the problem with the custom Gateway crap is also, that you can't just throw in a new motherboard. But the main task for this one is the everyday stuff, like email, surfing, IRC (sorry, no other chat tools in use) |
|
Video PC |
|
| This one is used to be the top dog. At that point it was the main content capturing machine, and used for little else. Mainly because it is a real drag to do anything on this machine if it is busy encoding video for 48 hours straight. |
HP AMD x2 3800 1 GB DDR RAM 2 * 250 GB SATA drive 16x DVD-RW |
| This one also replaced the old Aldi machine (see later), which decided to say "Good-Bye" while I was in New York with a friend. Since I was desperate and in a hurry, I got the HP but it has worked well, especially considering the low price. |
|
Sony Laptop (Dave) |
|
| This is my nice and small, lightweight laptop that I use for school and homework. I got this as part of what a friend calls "my scam". I don't consider it a scam though, maybe a loop-hole. Here is the story: |
Sony Core Duo T2400 Windows XP Pro 1 GB PC2-4200 13.3" TFT (1280*800) NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 7400 120 GB SATA drive 8x DVD-RW DL |
| When I got into the serious major classes at GVSU, I really needed a laptop. First it helped but also - everyone had a laptop in class. So I took the 3 year old Medion laptop, but the batteries are so drained, that I couldn't even sit through Hour 1 of a 3 hour class. So I wanted a laptop real bad, and started to look around and stop at every occasion. Chuck picked it up fast, and at least for this, I had an actual need, right? So they had that Toshiba Core Solo at CostCo, good price, decent hardware. Well, after a few days, I was sure I wanted it. So we bought it, with the equipment plan from work. It was fine, it got me through my super-hard Java II class. But after a while, you know how it is - the prices keep dropping, you get twice as much for half the price and so on. So one night, I was surfing around and just stumbled over a blog where someone mentioned CostCo's return policy. Apparently, they have a "6 Month Money Back" guarantee, no questions asked. Oh my, what a temptation! Well, to cut it short, I returned the Toshiba, got my money back, and bought this Sony laptop which is in the "ultra-portable" product group.
|
|
Multimedia PC (Antec) |
|
| Antec Aria |
AMD x64 3200+ Windows XP Pro 1 GB RAM ATI On-Board 250 GB SATA 500 GB My Book Essential 160 GB Ximeta Network Drive 12x DVD-RW DL |
| Multimedia PC connected to the projector
|
|
Aldi PC |
|
| Medion PC |
Pentium 4 2.4 Windows XP Pro 1 GB RAM NVidia "something" 250 GB ATA 16x DVD |
| FTP and P2P server
|
|
Xbox Upstairs |
|
| Don't tell me this isn't a Computer |
Celeron 700 EvoX with XBMC 64 MB RAM 80 GB ATA Samsung DVD |
| Entertainment System, connected to the PC
|
|
Xbox Downstairs |
|
| Ditto |
Celeron 700 EvoX with XBMC 64 MB RAM 120 GB ATA Thomson DVD |
| Entertainment System, also connected to the projector
|
|