Not Being Organised

Thinking about this, I've had 2 PCs in the last 8 years - which I suppose isn't all that bad.  The first was a cobbled together homebuild, the most recent was the first "real" shop bought PC I'd ever had and I did push the boat out.  It's lasted almost 5years but it was pretty expensive and had a high spec.

What I'm wondering is what I do today and also about the fact that because of the low turn over I don't have a standard "build" because doing that would be a waste of effort.

I spent the equivalent of $2000 on my last PC but I suspect I'll spend less than half of that today.  I _should_ have upgraded a year or more ago when I realised that the machine was reaching the end of it's natural life.  If a PC that lasts 4 years costs $2000, the chances are that a PC that costs $1000 will probable last only a little bit less, at least for the bulk of my needs.  Likewise the Media Center needs an upgrade and I've not got on with the Popcorn Hour, so eBay awaits that.

Buying a cheaper box but getting 2 and some proper networking would at last move me away from the messy hodge podge of components all over the house.  Having, for example, 2 fecking enormous power converter blocks for the 2 main household PCs looks to me like a bad idea.  Our electriticy use is double what it was a year ago before we got these, which is costing something like $40 a month.  I can also get some standard backups and so forth going.

While I'm going to buy the main machine at Fry's, I'll be ordering a replacement for the Media Center from a box shifter - I've worked out the spec of the Shuttle PC I want and will be arranging for it to arrive next week.

In terms of today, it looks like for my budget I can get a Quad Core, at least 500GB HDD, 4GB RAM and a new monitor.

For anybody in Seattle I'll have a motherboard with 2GB memory, 512KB Video Card and Video Capture Card around.  It needs HDDs and a PSU (yeah, that smells fried too).

I'll also have a 17" Flat Panel there are some blown cells in it but its servicable and available for pick up.  If this interests I can drop to the Pub Meet this after noon.

Anyway, onto the build...  this is a bit of an info dump to get my head around what I need to do today.

• Import the data drives from the backup drives
• iTunes (I have a trip next week and want my iPod update)
  
• Office (2003 - we'll probably get 2007 from the store next week)
• OneNote
  
• Livecare (I've gone off McAffee and MS software is effectively free for us)
• Set up PST file and Favourites
• Newsleecher
• Video Handling Software (DVD Cloner, DVD Ripper, Video file converters etc...)
• CCCP Codec pack (yeah I know, it's free... but it works)
• Skype
• Flock
• Bit Torrent client (azureus)

We'll get off to the MS Store next week for the Office software and probably a copy of Halo for PC...  well, I need to don't I?

I also want to move one of the DVD drives from the old box and get something for externally mounting the drives from the old machine to see what I can pull off them.  It might save working off the backup.

Blogged with the Flock Browser