SillyDog701

[Mandrake]

I've recently built my self a new computer The Radeon X1600 XT video card is probably the best part of the system - it's real fast, games just fly!

Any system with a Radeon X1600 is bound to be a more-than-just-good at gaming. What processor are you using in your new machine?

Personally I'm looking forward to seeing a machine with a dual-GPU Radeon X1900 configuration along with a 64-bit dual-core CPU.

CPU is a 64bit P4, overclocked slightly to 3.3 Ghz. Plays Farcry at 1280x960, maximum in game details with 4x Anti-Aliasing on quite nicely.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060426 Seajellyfish Firefox/1.5.0.3

[Don_HH2K]

Here are some pictures of my laptop, taped together after part of the display housing came off as a result of somebody throwing it around while I had it at school.



The affected area is marked off in red. The reason the rest is taped is due to the awful asymmetrical look created by only having one side taped together.

And here's the taped interior (and Halo on the screen, since I had nothing better to do today):

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 Donzilla/1.1PR1 (WML/1.3)

[Edward]

On my faster system, I had some trouble installing SUSE Linux 10.1, the DVD drive would not read the CD-R discs at all, I replaced it with a standard CD drive and that would not read the CD's.

I then removed the second CD drive and set the Mitsumi CD-RW drive as the master. 10.1 installed flawlessly after this and for some unexplained reason, the entire installation process took somewhat faster than expected.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060426 Firefox/1.5.0.3

[Tidus]

Me and the missus have 13 computers at home. Kas is a programmer, and has 7 testbeds, each with a separate version of Windows, from DOS to Vista Beta. We have 3 Dell PowerEdge SC1425s servers, plus my Shuttle and Kassie's everyday dual core machine.

Servers:

Dual 3.0GHz Intel Xeon processors
4GB DDR2 SDRAM
Two 250GB SATA150 Seagate hard drives
Dual GigE Ethernet connections.

Altogether, all 3 equal up to over 18GHz, with 12GB RAM & 1.5 Terabytes of HD space!!

My seperate server, Riku (yep, a Japanese girl's name), that powers KJC's website, is the following spec:

NEC PowerMate VL3 Slim Desktop
1GHz AMD Duron CPU
384MB Hyundai SD-RAM PC133 CL2 RAM
20GB WD HD
Pioneer DVR-105 DVD-RW Drive
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise & 25 CALs (Client Access Licenses)
Apache 2.0.54
PHP 5.0
MySQL


My Laptop:

Tiny A440 (Re-badged FIC)
1GHz Intel Pentium III
256MB SO-DIMM 144 Pin RAM
20GB Fujitsu HD
Quanta DVD-ROM/CD-ROM Drive
13" Hyundai TFT

I won't go on any more, i'll be here forever

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060516 SeaMonkey/1.0.2

[Tidus]

On my faster system, I had some trouble installing SUSE Linux 10.1, the DVD drive would not read the CD-R discs at all, I replaced it with a standard CD drive and that would not read the CD's.

I then removed the second CD drive and set the Mitsumi CD-RW drive as the master. 10.1 installed flawlessly after this and for some unexplained reason, the entire installation process took somewhat faster than expected.

Mitsumi drives are VERY reliable, we are an authorised reseller of Mitsumi products.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060516 SeaMonkey/1.0.2

[Mandrake]

I finally upgraded my hard drives. I took out the four old 80GB Western Digital PATA hard drives and replaced them with a pair of new 250GB Western Digital SATA2 hard drives. The performance offered by the drives is much better than the old PATA drives!



(Yes I do name my computers after The Transformers )

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[Don_HH2K]

My Compaq nx6325 came yesterday.



As you can see, the messed-up computer might be out of the picture, but the desk is still as much of a mess as ever.

Specs are:
Turion 64 X2 TL-60 (2GHz)
1GB DDR2-667 on two 512MB modules
100GB hard drive, 5400RPMs, don't know if it's parallel or serial ATA
15" screen (not a widescreen model), 1400x1050 native
Radeon Xpress 1150, because I don't do enough gaming to merit a dedicated graphics card
Broadcom LAN/WLAN/Bluetooth controller, does 10/1000 on the wired side and a/b/g on the wireless side up to 108Mbps

It came running XP Pro, but how could I leave XP Pro on it if it could support XP Pro X64? I found drivers for everything but the sound card (which I'm looking for), modem, and fingerprint reader (which I could care less about).

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2 x64; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060519 Minefield/3.0a1

[Antony]

It came running XP Pro, but how could I leave XP Pro on it if it could support XP Pro X64?

Why not?
Is it really necessary to get the latest of everything you can get hold of?

If I remember correctly, you had almost everything latest but QuickTime Player.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4

[DJGM]

It came running XP Pro, but how could I leave XP Pro on it if it could support XP Pro X64?

Why not?
Is it really necessary to get the latest of everything you can get hold of?

If a computer has a 64bit CPU on board, then why not take full advantage of it with a 64bit operating system?

It may be quite a bit pricier, but it'd certainly be a heck of a lot faster!

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[Don_HH2K]

Why not?
Is it really necessary to get the latest of everything you can get hold of?

If I remember correctly, you had almost everything latest but QuickTime Player.

I can give you a few reasons.

1. You don't buy a 64-bit processor to run a 32-bit operating system
2. 64-bit applications are going to become ubiquitous soon, just like 32-bit apps superseded 16-bit apps over fifteen years ago
3. 64-bit apps that are written specifically to take advantage of a 64-bit processor will run faster. I can get much better performance using Windows Media Encoder X64 than the 32-bit version
4. Try allocating more than 4GB of total system memory on XP32. A true 64-bit OS will let this machine last a few more years, seeing that I'll be able to buy 4GB of RAM and then expand that to some unholy amoumt (16GB by the time Blackcomb comes out?) using virtual memory.
5. It starts up (from bootloader to successful login) in ten seconds.
6. There's a free trial of Windows XP Pro X64 edition. That means I can actually use it legally, with no need to pirate it like my last XP install. It's a bad time to buy Windows now, seeing that Vista is going to be out soon. In the meantime, I can use the legal XP Pro license key that came with this machine to legalize my other copy.

Technically I did have the latest QuickTime Player installed, except it was through the QuickTime Alternative DirectShow filters rather than the standalone QuickTime Player. In any case, QuickTime has some sort of nasty bug preventing it or QuickTime Alternative from running on X64 machines yet.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.2; Win64; x64; SV1)

[Antony]

I can give you a few reasons.

1. You don't buy a 64-bit processor to run a 32-bit operating system

Nothing wrong with that.
I downgraded 2 PC from Windows XP to Windows 2000. Life was a lot easier after downgrading.

6. There's a free trial of Windows XP Pro X64 edition.

What? There's another separate version just for 64-bit?
The same copy of OS X will be 64-bit if you install it on PowerMac G5.

In any case, QuickTime has some sort of nasty bug preventing it or QuickTime Alternative from running on X64 machines yet.

QuickTime Player 7 plays and encodes industry standard H.264 movies smoothly on a 64-bit machine.

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[DJGM]

In any case, QuickTime has some sort of nasty bug preventing it
or QuickTime Alternative from running on X64 machines yet.

QuickTime Player 7 plays and encodes industry standard H.264 movies smoothly on a 64-bit machine.

Err, no. Don was reffering to x64, aka x86-64. In other words, 64bit CPU based PC's, not 64bit CPU based Apple Macs.

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[Don_HH2K]

I can give you a few reasons.

1. You don't buy a 64-bit processor to run a 32-bit operating system

Nothing wrong with that.
I downgraded 2 PC from Windows XP to Windows 2000. Life was a lot easier after downgrading.

In your case, that's perfectly acceptable. Going from 32-bit Windows XP to 32-bit Windows 2000 will most likely result in a performance increase, seeing that Windows 2000 is generally a lighter operating system than Windows XP. However, in my case, running a 64-bit native build of XP will speed things up, seeing that I have a 64-bit processor.

6. There's a free trial of Windows XP Pro X64 edition.

What? There's another separate version just for 64-bit?
The same copy of OS X will be 64-bit if you install it on PowerMac G5.

This way, you don't need to deal with multiple CDs or a DVD to install the operating system. Furthermore, a free trial of Tiger doesn't exist to begin with, and if it did, its image would be over 2.5GB in size. By comparison, the images for three XP CDs (Home, Pro, and Pro 64) would be less than 2GB. The free trial for XP64 was only 625MB.

Thanks DJGM for clearing up the X64≠PPC64 issue.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2 x64; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060519 Minefield/3.0a1

[Mandrake]

The latest QuickTime Alternative beta works (aside from the plugins, which crash Firefox for me! - so I just deleted them), but QuickTime and iTunes themselves don't work at all on Windows XP x64. I have a Windows XP 32bit VMware machine for the few apps that don't work with XP x64. (aside from iTunes, who can be bothered opening a virtual machine just to listen to music?!)

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[Don_HH2K]

The latest QuickTime Alternative beta works

1.71 Beta 2 did the trick. The control panel applet still crashes, though the DirectShow filters apparently work fine.

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