Bugger

My old main house PC just died.  The C drive effectively melted.  I suspect the drive bearings gave out.  It's a shame, I had everything backed up onto an external drive but I admit that the thought of rebuilding a computer fills me with dread.

The unit is 5 years old and was top of the range when I bought it but 5 years is a long time in computing, so now I need to figure out what to next.  The household computers are, frankly, a bit of a mess of various kit bought and assembled at different times.  The PC I use as a media Center is a hand-me down that's probably 6ish.  I've got 3 different WD books for backups and media storage.

It occurs to me that if PCs are going to continue to be an essential part of the home, I ought to actually think about a structure to the machines I have and replace them with something cost effective and sustainable. 

What I'm not clear on is what I should replace the main home PC with.  I suspect the old main house PC should be put to work as a File Server with some new drives in it but looking inside the unit and extracting the busted HDD, it wasn't really designed as a user servicable machine and it might all end up cheaper to buy a purpuse built RAID array.

The other problem is the type of machine to replace my main desktop with.  I have been needing a new monitor for it for a while with a bunch of "blown" pixels mucking up the image.  It hasn't run decent FPS games in a year or two, and it's horrible to play Flight Simulator on, so it's basically a machine for downloads and word processing.

I could keep it as that and replace it with a really cheap box that would run current games badly but should I do more...

Hmmm....  need to think about that...

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Wireless Router to Bridge Coms

So, I've been using a PowerLine networking system for the home but frankly the throughput sucks and it interferes with stuff on the home electrical system - I suspect we have cheaparse crappy wiring myself.

I am looking to take the opportunity to change the home computer set up to go a little greener and standardise the home computing network.

Effectively I have 2 networks in the house, we'll call them UPSTAIRS and DOWNSTAIRS.

DOWNSTAIRS has my home PC (used for downloading, games, word processing, email, file storage etc...), my work PC, the networked home printer which is attached to the Powerline Network.  I also have the Wireless Access Point, an Ethernet Switch and another Powerline access point.

UPSTAIRS: Media center PC, Networked Media Tank, Networked Media Storage (1 TB WD Book), DSL Modem (DHCP Server), PowerLine Access point, Ethernet Switch.  Usually M's personal laptop and her work laptop when she's home.

The weak link in this set up are the two Power Line APs - while I have the HD variety I just can't get the throughput on them which is down under 1.5MBS - you can't stream and a large media file takes hours to copy.  I certainly can't reliably use the file server nor do regular backups.

QUESTION: Can you connect 2 Wireless N Ethernet Bridges in place of the 2 Ethernet Switches and have them connect wirelessly AND act as APs for the laptops?  Wiring the house isn't practical and the low bandwidth of the PowerLine is driving me nuts.

In other news I might have to give up on the Popcorn Hour - it just isn't doing the job for me in terms of acting as an access point for DVD files, it stutters and even playing local files and large AVIs it's slow.

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fry's it is

So it'll be off to Frys then for a new PC. Can't be having with not being set up.