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I build a lot of really low end machines. I make an effort to put in a quality power supply, but in a $250 computer, high power efficiency isn't really a possibility. Probably 70% of the systems I sell have Antec Earthwatts units in them, but the other 30% just don't.

I repair too many machines that have an Acer badge on them to give them any serious consideration. The Lenovos are not Thinkpads. They use a different ODM for everything that doesn't have a Thinkpad badge. Ideapads are pretty nice for consumer shit - but they aren't the same thing and should...

I can usually tell the difference between onboard sound and a decent add-in card, if the PC is hooked up to decent enough speakers. I'll admit that a lot of the time it doesn't matter, but I'd far rather have my AuzenTech hardware than some crappy Sigmatel or RealTek chip.

Nope, but the USB digital sound wound up as a sales point.

That's an aggregate number. I'm sure each system in the supercomputer is closer to the scale I mentioned. :P

I've read that AMD is working on integrating an ATI GPU in future generations of its processors, as a replacement for one of the general-purpose cores found on current chips. I'm not sure that's the right way to go. I have to think that an add-in GPU is always going to be a lot more advanced...

Not that I know of. How is that germane to this particular discussion?

I don't have fun. No, really. I don't. Based on observation, I know that there is such a thing. I'm not sure I've ever had any of it. The closest I really get is the sense of accomplishment I have from dispatching my responsibilities. My leisure activities are geared more toward passing time...

I think that even if they aren't, Hitachi, Fujitsu, WD and Seagate probably are, and I'll bet there will be some sweet, sweet discounts to make sure that their inventory is run out, too.

I have never encountered a PDF file that Foxit could not open. I have found secured PDFs. Fortunately, I have other software for stripping that protection if need be. For that matter, I think I've needed to do THAT a grand total of twice. But Foxit opened the protected files both times. Given...

You said Creative in the same sentence with drivers, and that's as much troubleshooting as needed to be done.

Most of the laptops sold are $500 vomitbook models and el cheapo business fleet systems. Those machines won't be moving to SSDs until Acer and HP and Dell and the other purveyors of vomit have removed the last of their shitty 4200rpm 80, 100 and 160GB drives, let alone whatever other standard...

From the SSD thread, and clearly not related to that topic, except insofar as I would buy timwhit an Intel SSD for every SATA port he owns if that would result in my having a girlfriend. You know, I spent many thousands of dollars on therapy and medication over a period of several years. The...

On most of the systems I build, there's no subjective difference between, say, a 2GHz E1200 and a 2.2GHz (I think) E7300 and a 2.4GHz Q6600, unless I start using them at what is for me a normal workload - pirating a DVD while doing image-intensive word processing, with 50 or 100 open browser...

In one of the weirder things I've had to do recently, I put one of these on a server that needed not just audio but a SPDIF connector. Yes, that's right: $4250 including labor so that my customer never has to be without pure digital XM radio because he's too cheap to buy a $50 XM receiver for...

I got in an argument with one of those bell-ringing fucks today. I put $10 in their bucket and when she said "Merry Christmas" I responded with "Have a safe and happy Kwanzaa!" and she started lecturing me about how I was a pagan and how I shouldn't have put money in her bucket if it wasn't done...

Foxit PDF Editor is fairly inexpensive and works well.

I think I mentioned that bit already. I don't have access to enough hardware for any one customer's environment to do testing of their applications to see how well they would work in a virtual environment, which makes me rather leery to deploy their servers that way. The LAST thing I want to...

If I wanted to buy a woman's company, I certainly could. My brother makes regular trips out of the country with the express purpose of visiting prostitutes. I have money. I could do the same thing. I have a certain disdain for that idea, myself. I'd rather go without - and in my case that has...

Shutting down your VM instead of just closing its window is a big help with that. The machine I'm using right now has a total of maybe 20MB RAM devoted to VMware Server. Of course, that's the old, good version.

timwhit, I will very gladly swap you as many Intel SSDs as you have SATA ports for a girlfriend.

The 80GB one. I'm not sure if I'm going to put it in a notebook or my game system. One or the other, though.

VMs are great for migrating low-complexity legacy systems on to new hardware (e.g. move the Novell based point of sale system onto a Linux Host). I've done that a bunch of times. I've never worked in an environment with high density clusters when you can seemlessly migrate guest images among...

VMs are great for migrating low-complexity legacy systems on to new hardware (e.g. move the Novell based point of sale system onto a Linux Host). I've done that a bunch of times. I've never worked in an environment with high density clusters when you can seemlessly migrate guest images among...

There's still the free version of TrueImage available to Seagate owners.

I would just like to point out once again that I make a lot less money than a lot of the other IT folks here; probably less than half what ddrueding or Fushigi make. We're not all made out of money. :P But I did just order an Intel SSD. Happy Birthday to me.

Well that's certainly nifty!

All my systems - every single one that I am responsible for - is on XP SP3 these days. I have not had any issues with it.

Those are product lines. Losing Barracuda drives means losing 90% of what normal people will buy that says Seagate on it.

I don't have that. I've been on auto pilot for years.

From an Email I just got from Seagate's partner program: "For products purchased on or after January 3, 2009, the limited warranty period for consumer electronics, notebook and personal storage bare drives sold to Seagate Authorized Distributors will be changed from 5 to 3 years. Seagate...

Hope your WLAN hardware isn't Atheros based.

That PatchCache folder is really big. I suspect a lot of that space in your Windows folder is coming from the fact that you can uninstall patches whereas a slipstreamed install won't have that ability. Printer drivers, especially inkjet printers, are also criminally huge.

Yes. I make an updated disc pretty regularly; maybe every six weeks or so. My most recent one is a couple weeks old now. If anything, my windows install should be bigger as a result of that.

There's something to be said for the blantant way the Bush presidency manipulated the general public and the media. Authorizing torture, announcing terror alerts every time political rivals threatened to do anything positive during a news cycle (really, go back and look!), secretly wiretapping...

I have udaman on ignore and I don't read his posts, but since Fushigi quoted him, I shall respond: I made a statement that various SF members have absurd space requirements on their system drives. Other members suggested that the minimum size of a windows installation is much larger than I...

I really hope it's much more than half. It's been a long fucking time since I've felt anything but completely numb about life or the world around me.

To be fair, the guy has been under federal investigation for one thing or other almost since the day he took office. You didn't have to be psychic to know he was going to end up in jail sooner or later.

The Tyan setup plus one E5410 (4 x 2.33GHz) + 8GB worth of FBDIMMs comes to around $1500 as well. I could stick in four 500GB drives and still it my budgeted goal of $2000. P5, the Supermicro machines you listed all seem to indicate compatibility only with 5x00-series Xeons. I'm sure the...

As a note, I don't typically install all of Nero or all of Office 2003, since Outlook is against my religion and most people don't use Publisher, but this guy wanted the whole thing.

Ahem. This is a fresh Windows install from my basic prepared image. Fully updated XP SP3, Full install of Office 2003, Avast, TrueImage Home, Burnaware (rather than Nero, which would have used more space), Firefox etc. My lightly customized Windows XP SP3 install includes slipstreamed drivers...

As a warning, yes, Spacemonger crashes a lot. I'll build a system tonight and check my size on disk again. I swear that it's less than 5GB, though.

Here's the datasheet and here's the Newegg.. I'm not sure about that machine's hardware RAID, and it uses 5000-series Xeons rather than the less expensive 3000-series, and it uses FBDIMMs, but the Intel server boards I was looking at were $600 apiece and needed a lot more work to put together.

I've got a SLIGHTLY customized Windows install, but I don't think I prune off that much!

I am most concerned about RAM capacity, actually. 8GB seems limiting when building for five years in the future. I'm thinking 2xquad core CPUs won't be a limiting factor, and as long as I have at least SATA2 I'm probably good in terms of disk I/O, since that's what SSDs seem to be using. The...

Those Tyan units seem a bit limited for my needs. The price is right, but the features aren't there, particularly since that motherboard doesn't do hardware RAID or even registered ECC memory, and I was looking at 8GB as a minimum supported configuration, not maximum.

I'm sure it's just a research project, but I'm still intrigued by the idea that I could use a browser-based VM to run legacy applications and possibly not have to bugger around with something like VMware just to make some crufty old point of sale system work.

There's something wrong there. I can fit fully updated XP + Office 03 + Nero 7 + TrueImage + Foxit Reader + Firefox + my old-ass copy of ACDSee (2.something) + Picasa + 150MB of graphics card drives in about 4GB. 2.25GB as a sysprepped image. Even if I throw in a bunch of printer drivers I don't...

No one I'm dealing with has the kind of needs that would justify that cost at the moment. Looking at the workloads on the machines presently in place, none of them at present are even using 2GB of RAM and all of them have fairly short disk queues. These are machines that are handling limited...

I have been alive for 11688 days and I think pretty much all of them have sucked.