ZOMG PC inza HAUZ!!!!1
First, I want to thank my own stupidity for believing I could make heads or tails out of the seemingly endless assortment of windows services, options, flags, switches, configurations, DLLs, CABs, addons, patches, upgrades, service packs, drivers, etc., and after 4 attempts to install and 3 total hard drive reformats, FINALLY get a stable version of XP Pro with SP3 running on my Shuttle XPC.
The #1 cause of the THREE DAYS OF HELL spent trying to just get this system up and running was chiefly due to attempting to get a good "lite" consolidated, pre-patched, slipstreamed XP SP3 install CD made with the excellent program nLite. Mind you, nLite probably is really primo for system builders and IT professionals and those people who engineer custom OEM branded versions of Windows that come bundled with Dell, Gateway, Alienware, and other PCs that are fooking useless for any other general purpose computer.
It's such a brilliant program that it takes a brilliant person to make the right decisions as to what to leave on and what to take out and what to add back in so your system is all good to go the moment the initial XP setup is over with.
Now for a quick gaming benchmark, aka why macs suck: WoW set with all graphics sliders at maximum, 1680x1050 resolution, 24/24-bit depth, 2x Multisampling, no Level of Detail reductions, Full Screen Glow enabled, 114 FPS. iMac would croak, honestly. It needed a lot tweaked down or off just to get to 30 FPS and still be at a lower resolution and 1x multisampling. I am ballpark estimating I got nearly 10x the gaming FPS crank potential in this little lanbox PC than in the iMac (with its factory-faulty power supply, that I've still not taken in for repair).
The #1 cause of the THREE DAYS OF HELL spent trying to just get this system up and running was chiefly due to attempting to get a good "lite" consolidated, pre-patched, slipstreamed XP SP3 install CD made with the excellent program nLite. Mind you, nLite probably is really primo for system builders and IT professionals and those people who engineer custom OEM branded versions of Windows that come bundled with Dell, Gateway, Alienware, and other PCs that are fooking useless for any other general purpose computer.
It's such a brilliant program that it takes a brilliant person to make the right decisions as to what to leave on and what to take out and what to add back in so your system is all good to go the moment the initial XP setup is over with.
Now for a quick gaming benchmark, aka why macs suck: WoW set with all graphics sliders at maximum, 1680x1050 resolution, 24/24-bit depth, 2x Multisampling, no Level of Detail reductions, Full Screen Glow enabled, 114 FPS. iMac would croak, honestly. It needed a lot tweaked down or off just to get to 30 FPS and still be at a lower resolution and 1x multisampling. I am ballpark estimating I got nearly 10x the gaming FPS crank potential in this little lanbox PC than in the iMac (with its factory-faulty power supply, that I've still not taken in for repair).