28. February 2008 by admin.

This category will be used to document all the hardware and software I use.

I’ll start with operating systems. All of my PCs run Windows - I occasionally foray into the Linux world within a virtual PC, but that’s rare. My laptop runs Vista Ultimate and has since I bought it in April 2007. I also have one Vista Ultimate desktop I’m using as a Media Center, and one Media Center 2005 desktop. Most of the other PCs in the house run XP Pro. I also have one PC running Windows Home Server.

My main laptop is an HP tx1119us. This laptop has a 12.1-inch screen at 1280×800, a dual-core AMD 64-bit CPU, 2Gb of RAM, and a 160Gb hard disk. I bought this machine for two reasons - its ability to run Vista, and its size. After carrying a 15-inch laptop around for years, I finally decided to go smaller and lighter. When I bought this laptop, I was looking at it and a similar-sized Toshiba unit. HP put this one on sale for several hundred dollars less than the Toshiba. I paid $1,150, but a nearly identical unit (with a touch screen) has been seen recently as low as $750.

This laptop came loaded with, well, crapware. I uninstalled everything I could, but it still wasn’t enough. I finally had to load Vista from scratch - fortunately HP’s web site included all the drivers I needed. So far, the laptop has had no problems and is very portable.

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20. February 2008 by admin.

Ever now and again, I spend far too much on geek toys. This could include simple things like CAT-6 cables or expensive things like a new Quad-core computer. In the old days, I’d visit sites like Microcenter or Newegg and browse around. Sometimes I’d even hit Froogle if I knew exactly what I wanted. Finding the best price was still a hit or miss thing.
Then I discovered TechBargains. Basically, they look far and wide for sales, and post the info so you can easily find it. Now, I look there sometimes twice a day, even when I don’t really need anything, because I never can tell what I might find there. Bargains abound, and sometimes they only last for mere hours (like that Dell quad-core PC for only $549). So far, using this site has literally saved me hundreds of dollars over the past year or so. Highly recommended.

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