My computers...

Being unorthodox in most things...

I have a day job at an interesting company, which can remain nameless...I get to do some exotic stuff. And some pedestrian stuff, that's often a need too.

I mostly get to do things I like, which is great.

One of the things I get to do (because I choose to): I have my own computer. Well, really, all the engineers do. The diff is that I build my own from pieces. Everyone else: std config whatever the company is buying (well, with some variations, but not much).

Mine: completely different. This way I get what I want (which is NOT a generic Dell, which has gone from best to pretty sucky in recent years), when I want, and can upgrade when/how I want.

So I have this:



It takes an AMD Athlon x64 X2, 2GB RAM. On-board video plus a good PCI-Ex card means three monitors, which is pretty dang cool. And it is *quiet*. It's now 3 yrs old, so what was hot at the time is less so now; this doesn't really bother me a lot, except that now I am doing some work where more power would be helpful. (At the least I want a quad core, and 4GB RAM.)

I'm also thinking about a touch-screen, having played with those new HP units a little. Touch-position precision is weaker than I'd prefer there...but a touch-screen would be a nifty thing to do some UI work with, and there seem to be some < $1000 in the 25-inch range.

The process at work for getting a computer is kinda broken, inasmuch as I could get the Dell, but not something as slick as what I have. So I bought/built it myself. Replaced a drive when the original boot-drive started doing that bad clicking thing (see blog late 08 on this), got a video card aimed at decent game perf, just the right RAM (2GB dual-channel). My preferred kbd and mouse combos. My preferred monitors. Etc. I buy my own software, too, so I get what I want when I want.

New machine coming probably a year from now. If I can get something in roughly the same form-factor. With a 4-core or better CPU, at least 50% faster clock-rate.

This is the machine I do all my programming on. And nearly all my game-playing. And not much else.

My Macintosh G5 is where I do all the other stuff, like music, photos, video, database, taxes, personal info--the non-game fun stuff...that's had a chunk of upgrade, too, but less. RAM (5GB) and disk (1TB).