The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 15/11/07
Changing The System
As reported here, I've bought a new PC with all mod cons.
And here it is:
I'd be lying if I said that everything had gone completely smoothly. Nothing ever does. There was a misunderstanding over which operating system I wanted, but that was sorted out without any difficulty. Then the machine wouldn't recognise the floppy drive (yes, I am old fashioned - so sue me), but that was down to a loose power connector and sorted out pronto.
This setup is more compact than the old one, largely because I now have a combined printer/scanner, rather than have them separate as before. That means that the router now sits on the little shelf by my feet.
Another thing this PC is is quiet. You see, the CPU fan on the old one packed up after just over four years, and I thought that I'd buy a more powerful one to drop the temperature down. Unfortunately, I'd failed to take the extra noise level into account, and my last two-and-a-bit years of home computing have taken place to the accompaniment of what sounds like a DC10 going by. Now I find myself looking under the desk every few minutes just to check that the new one is running.
It's also fast. So it should be with a 4200 AMD dual-core. A bit of a change from an 800 Duron!
I haven't had time to check out all the functions of the printer/scanner/copier, nor do very much with burning DVDs or the like, mostly because I've been trying to get a home network set up between the newbie and my veteran Windows 98 PC. So far, I've got both machine talking to the router, and the XP machine can access the share on the 98 one, but do you think I can get the 98 one even to ping the new one? Nada, nowt, zilch. Probably just a firewall setting, so I'll persevere.
The video capture card hasn't come into play yet, because I need a cable to connect it to my VCR and I haven't got round to buying one yet. Then I can get a load of old video onto disk.
So, let's hear it for Mick and his team at Micro Plus in Wrexham!
