Okay, so maybe it’s not so bad
This is the first ever post to a weblog from a Windows machine for me. I know, I know. Those who know me and my occasional (okay, frequent) rants against Windows will no doubt be amazed and somewhat amused.
For the past year or so, I’ve had the need to have an Intel machine running for web testing and a couple of apps that are only available on the Windows platform (eBay’s TurboLister, for one, Counter-Strike for another :-). So, about a year ago, I went on eBay and bought a barebones 2.1 gig AMD machine. I’ve got monitors, printers, keyboards and pointing devices, so it was perfect, in the box new and ultra cheap (somewhere around $250). It stayed in that box until a couple weeks ago, when I finally fired it up. Or at least tried to.
Nothing.
Took it down to my local PC Club (a great, old-style computer store with almost as much floor space dedicated to setup and repair as sales). Diagnosis? Fried motherboard and processor.
Sigh. Much too late to get a replacement. Oh well, another couple hundred bucks and I’m in business. XP installed (I was going to put Linux on the box and still may, but figured that would defeat the purpose), popped in the wireless card to use my Mac network and fired it all up, waiting for the hassles to begin.
But so far, there really haven’t been any. It’s fast. Sure, the onboard graphics can’t handle the high end game stuff (needs another $75 in a card for that), but all in all, a fairly nice user experience. I’m surprised, I think, mainly because of my experience with XP on my wife’s laptop from HP. In other words, S-L-O-W and harddrive grinding. Clearly, her machine is spyware and bs-ware ridden. When I’m a little more up to speed on this OS (I’ve been Mac-only since 1998), I’ll reinstall XP on her machine and clean it all up.
Gratifyingly, my new Intel box plays nicely on the network, allows all the sharing I’ve asked it to do and plays Counter-Strike beautifully. I wanted to try out the on-screen editing for my Typepad account, and it’s somewhat cool, but I don’t think I’ll be giving up Ecto anytime soon.
