End of an Era
The best computer I've ever had has died in its prime. A 3.6ghz P4 with a gig of ram I bought between 3 and 4 years ago. It was the first computer I bought myself with my own hard-earned money and it operated more smoothly than any other system I've ever seen. It filled me with delight every time I used it. It moved with me from home to home to home, across the country. It was my full-time homework-station for a year and a half of grad school. It was my main lifeline to Acacia when we dated long distance. And last night, without warning, the power supply and motherboard burned out.
My data survived, which is wonderful, but I'm still in mourning. It's like Spock giving McCoy his katra. He's still dead--for a while--and even keeping the salvageable parts, it won't be the same, with a new CPU and a new OS (my system installation disks are BURIED in storage) and so on.
Acacia needs a new computer too. Both her desktop and laptop have recently crashed and we're both depending on an old, obsolete laptop she somehow had in a closet instead of giving away. We're thinking of giving her the gutted remains of my old system and getting me a new computer. The University Computer Store has student discounts, but they only offer Dell PCs. I haven't really kept on top of consumer reports for computer hardware in the last few years. Anyone out there know what sort of performance can be expected from a Dell machine? Should we seek elsewhere?
My data survived, which is wonderful, but I'm still in mourning. It's like Spock giving McCoy his katra. He's still dead--for a while--and even keeping the salvageable parts, it won't be the same, with a new CPU and a new OS (my system installation disks are BURIED in storage) and so on.
Acacia needs a new computer too. Both her desktop and laptop have recently crashed and we're both depending on an old, obsolete laptop she somehow had in a closet instead of giving away. We're thinking of giving her the gutted remains of my old system and getting me a new computer. The University Computer Store has student discounts, but they only offer Dell PCs. I haven't really kept on top of consumer reports for computer hardware in the last few years. Anyone out there know what sort of performance can be expected from a Dell machine? Should we seek elsewhere?