16 April 2009

Big Daddy

My PC is 6 years old. When purchased, it was - at the time- a state-of-the-art multimedia computer. However, it was only ever designed for limited home use. Over the last 5 years, it's been switched on almost permanently (I run scans overnight), and for the last 4, it's been a faithful workhorse subjected to up to 12 hours a day of hardcore abusetyping and surfing since I turned freelance.

It's been patched up over the years - a new motherboard, an extra hard drive, new graphics and sound cards, even a new casing. And 5 keyboards...

Sadly, it's on death's doorstep. Last month, I called out the PC doctor to replace the RAM, and last week, there was a failed attempt to install yet another new graphics card. The ageing innards simply couldn't handle the latest in gfx technology. Realistically, it was time to stop throwing money away and get a replacement.

A friend called to offer me some top-notch advice on a local computer supplier who could customise for my needs, so yesterday I headed out for a chat with the experts, who helped me draw up a list of my wants and needs and price it all up.

The new boy has already been nicknamed Big Daddy (not least because of his price tag) - my new kit will be a proper work machine rather than a souped-up home PC put to other use. Step forward 2 terabytes of storage, 4 gigs of RAM, an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU and the rest... It's going to be 3 to 5 days in the building, then no doubt a day to get it up and running here and copying over all my stuff from this PC.

I can't wait.

Now I just have to find an extra gig to pay for him...

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