What computer are you posting from?

[indy_azcat]

please let someone have one crappier than me, it's driving me nuts! :nopity:

333MHz Compaq Presario laptop circa 1996

Thank goodness for firefox speed tweaks :o

[Crazy Guggenheim]

1. Ok Doc. I can call you that now. The primary one I use is my

2001 HP.

[indy_azcat]

3. wife's got a Pavilion from around that time - very solid actually!

only 3 expansion slots though and no AGP :(

HP and Compaq really should have stayed separate. Support for Compaq REALLY sucks now.

[ghostsofgiants]

2. Self-built; Pentium 4 3.0GHz desktop, circa 2004

[indy_azcat]

4. drool

But hey, I can play all the kick ass games without MoSlo :D

I'm thinking about getting an Alienware... thoughts?

[ghostsofgiants]

6. Quality systems, but they can be pricey...

Also, their cases are quite attractive.

Maybe try putting together a parts list of one to build yourself and compare the price with a comparable Alienware system.

[indy_azcat]

9. good advice!

I don't mind working the inards of a pre-built... but I still am a little gun-shy about building my own and dealing w/ cooling and case mods...

[ghostsofgiants]

14. Building and cooling are pretty simple

There are tons of good instructional sites online about building a system.

As for cooling, a pair of case fans and a decent CPU cooler and you should be good. I'm not a case mod guy, my case is the way it came out of the box.

[LaurenG]

5. me too except

my husband made it and it's 2005.

[ConcernedCanuk]

7. Dell Optiplex GXi - 166 - 233MMX upgrade

.
.
.

was 166 when I bought it used 2 years ago for 100 bucks with 32M RAM

put in a 233MMX processor I had kicking around from a dead mumboard, upped the RAM to 128M added a 4G HD to the single 2G HD

poor thing is tweaked to the max (if tweaking is even an appropriate term here)

Runnin Mozilla 1.6 on Win98SE, with IE6 and an Avant Browser skin on toppa that, PhotoShop 5.5, ImageForge, WinAmp, Office 2000 Professional, Corel's WP 7.0 - that's just the short list -

slower than dogdoo in winter,

but still workin'

[indy_azcat]

8. yea! someone with a suckier one than me! :)

Win98 for me (and only SE for the Belkin wireless adapter!)
4Gb HD and upped the ram to 160Mb

She'd still be respectable if only I could turn off the add-on firewall (Zonealarm) and virusscan (McAfee)... dang internets!

I've noticed that comparable processor speeds seem to just "feel" faster on desktops than laptops though... overhead?

[ConcernedCanuk]

19. not just "seem" slower, laptops ARE slower as a rule

.
.
.

It's the Hard Drives that slow them down.

Most laptop Hard Drives, especially older ones, literally turn slower than desktop HDs, slowing down the search speed of the processor

The fastest processor in the world can't do more than the spinning speed of the HD will allow it

Here's some info from the Web

"n 2005, a typical workstation hard disk might store between 80 GB and 400 GB of data, rotate at 7,200 to 10,000 rpm, and have a sequential transfer rate of over 50 MB/s. The fastest workstation hard drives spin at 15,000 rpm.

Notebook hard drives, which are physically smaller than their desktop counterparts, tend to be slower and have less capacity. Most spin at only 4,200 rpm or 5,400 rpm, though the newest top models spin at 7,200 rpm."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_drive

[indy_azcat]

21. awesome info! I never knew that. -eom

[Poiuyt]

10. I use Macintosh

I'm posting now from my Mini, but I also have a Dual G5 that I use in my work.

[indy_azcat]

11. the compaq actually replaced a performa powerpc

macs and upgrades just did not get along at the time... I may consider making "the switch", but I think I'd lean to a Linux box first. I'm more of a hardcore math computation vs. a graphics/media person anyhoo.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

13. Try *a few distros* of Linux before you switch. Some of them

are junk and nothing but junk.

[indy_azcat]

15. well, i've played with

slackware (pretty great), mandrake (didn't like), debian (arrrrrrgh!), Redhat/Fedora (nice!), and ASP (not sure - just wanted to use the disk druid).

I've never had an issue w/ Linux, it's just that work software required being windows platformed (that, and make sure you don't use bob's bargain barn hardware or good luck with the drivers).

[Crazy Guggenheim]

17. Ok. It's just that some Linux Distros are "unfinished" IMHO. Also,

you might want to get one of those applications to run some Windows apps until you totally move over.

[Poiuyt]

16. I was under the impression that the new G5s were supposed to be

really good for math and scientific computations.

Check out Apple's site on science:

http://www.apple.com/science/

[indy_azcat]

18. dang it! I keep forgetting they switched to a UNIX backbone...

old prejudices die hard unfortunately... I'll have to research this more. Thanks for the mindspank! :spank:

[Initech]

12. I'm posting from my Powerbook G4

[ScreamingMeemie]

20. Sony Vaio...something or other. Got it last year, run it with XP.

:hi:

[indy_azcat]

22. Consumer Reports recommends them :thumbsup:

I've only known one other person who had a Vaio (laptop) and she had major issues w/ it (speakers, display, HD, etc.). Then again, the BestBuy service dept. may have had something to do w/ it.

go blue and buy blue :)

[CatholicEdHead]

23. eMachines M6805 Laptop

you can still buy them but under the Gateway name. AMD Athlon 64 equiv 1.4GHZ chip and ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 graphic card.

[Jackpine Radical]

24. Fujitsu convertible tablet

1.25 gig RAM, 1.6 Centrino chip.

Just starting to learn the tablet stuff, especially 1Note. I eventually intend to use it for keeping my handwritten casenotes & typing them into psych reports. It has voice recog too, but I haven't done anything with it beyond getting it to work once.

[indy_azcat]

26. very cool! we're one step behind and just got our first PDA

surprisingly smart handwriting software though! The voice recognition is so-so, but pretty good too (Dell Axim).

[bridgit]

25. it's a bullshit dell...

pentium 4, 3gig, 512mb

[indy_azcat]

27. your bullshit makes me cry...

:cry:

ETA: wanna trade?

[bridgit]

28. don't cry, indy_azcat, i'll start crying...

i mostly say 'bullshit' cause the tech support is maddening to follow-up on...hey wait a minute...in fact it is enough to make'ya wanna cry :cry:

[indy_azcat]

29. Consumer Reports agrees - worst Service ever

that and Dell is red acording to buyblue.org

Gateway apparently has great service, are blue, but the dang things break all the time... that leaves apple I guess :shrug:

[bridgit]

30. dude they fully suck, hubby does tech support...

but felt he had to go through 'the hoops' when the sound card blew out but all two different guys in india could keep suggesting for like 3 freaking hours was to keep running the software over & over; they so can't think outside their cubicle, finally just bought one, snapped it in & BAM! done = dell tech support :shrug: what tech support

[bigwillq]

31. The one at work

A gateway 2000. It sucks.

[NMMNG]

32. Dell Inspiron 1150 (refurbished)

Mobile Pentium 4, 266MHz memory speed, 30GB memory, CDRW/DVD drive, etc, etc.