Every so often I get this urge to have things, things that I really shouldn't buy. I usually end up making a list of these things and throwing them away. This is probably a good thing. But occasionally, I list them here so you can all see how materialistic I am.
I've been pricing out new desktop PCs lately. I've been trying to stay minimal but get the most for the money, knowing very little about individual components. My interest in knowing the minutia of component performance has waned over the years. What I've been pricing is a Core 2 Duo 2.67mhz (it seems that when you go Core 2, you might as well get the fastest one you can find), 4GB of RAM (I have 3 now, so I can't do with less), a super-fast system drive and a giant secondary drive, the fastest pair of DL-DVD writers I can get, and a motherboard that supports dual 16x PCI Express slots to hold matching dual-head video cards. What are my needs here?
Well, the main problem with the current machine sounds kind of silly, but it's the sound. It wasn't really a problem when I was using the PC at home for a few hours a night. But now that I work on it for 10+ hours a day in a small room, I'm beginning to notice a bit of hearing loss. Seriously. That just can't be allowed to continue. So I get to the point where I don't know what parts I need to replace to make the current PC quieter without crippling it (do I need a new power supply? different case fans?), and then I look at the server PC I bought a couple of months ago and don't hear at all and think that maybe it's time to step up....
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