My work PC has exploded. It was inevitable. The hard drive has been making strange noises every time I check/download my email for a couple of months now. Although it’s been chugging along well all this time, it has finally gone off to heaven.
Fortunately, I’ve been doing almost nightly backups (Monday through Thursday) so I won’t have lost much. The trouble is that that it’s going to be a better option to replace the entire system than it will be to put a new drive in and reinstall Windows. The Windows XP CDs I originally used to install Windows on that system have simply walked off. I have no idea where they are.
Anyway, I priced out a new computer from Dell and from the local PC dealer. The local guy is $30 cheaper and can have it in a couple of days. The warranty will be better, too - a year of “haul it into the shop and wait while we fix it” as opposed to 90 days of “we’ll send a box for you to ship it back to us, and we’ll get to it when we get to it.”
The new system will be three times as fast as my old one, and a step up in processor class. That’s right, I was running a P3-850. You don’t really need anything too fantastic when you’re working on the web, you know? All of the good stuff happens on the server.
Nonetheless, the new system will be much appreciated, since it’ll have updated everything in regard to hardware (CD-RW/DVD & video, most importantly). I’m looking forward to it. Especially since I’m stuck running Knoppix on the old box until they finish assembling it.
