Upgrayed Pt. 2

So. Now I know what I want:

CPU
Motherboard
RAM
Power Supply (cause any motherboard/CPU I upgrade to will need more power than my old solution was using. make sure you take that into account when youre purchasing upgrades. Power is plenty important and can be the source of many a problem.)

Now I need to shop around. I am blessed enough to live in a city that caters to the industry. In addition to more Comp USA's, Best Buys's, and Computer City's than I can easily count- Theres 3 Fry's stores that serve this city alone. Thats just overkill, but I certainly dont mind it. For instant gratification in your BYOC (Build your own computer) venture, Fry's is a good place to start. Spend time with the sales reps learn about the pieces youre buying, check specs against multiple products and make a selection, in one of the best stores for that kind of consumer goodness. I am also of the good fortune to have worked in a small store that does computer assembly and parts sales and So I know people who i can ask for opinions and can trust to get quality parts. Sometimes I'll pay a little more, but i know im buying something i wont be returning the next day. (which.. happens more often than i like to admit).
So I shopped. I dont want to spend too much, cause im not independently wealthy and my money tree has been confiscated by the government. I set a conservative ceiling of 200 dollars. So. I tell the guys I know (or you would tell the sales guy) what you want and how much you want to spend. Be specific. If you dont want to swing wild from your estimate, dont give them much room to sell you. Know what things you want and what things you dont and while you should be firm, do listen to their suggestions. If they suggest that the 19 dollar power supply wont work, find out why the 200 dollar one will, then find one somewhere in the middle that does the same thing. Another alternative is to have your parts shipped in. You can find really good deals (ill tell you where in another post) if you dont mind thinking ahead and having your things shipped to you. Though, getting your shipped parts in a timely fashion can pretty much obliterate any savings you got on the parts themselves unless you get some free shipping. Which some places offer.

I did both. I contacted my good friends locally, Had them order some parts to their store, assemble and test them then I added the components I found at their store to my order. I paid a little over my estimate, but I got quality parts, tested, and I trust who I was buying from- and thats certainly worth the cost of shipping.

So. In a couple days I'll have the pieces I need to actually complete this upgrade and get to the real work. Stay Tuned to find out what horrible mistake ive already made!!!

WinRARRRRR!

So as you might have heard I'm building a new media storage place. And that means Ive got to move everything from one place to the other (and consolidating at the same time). But what if you have gobs and gobs of music and don't want to wait 14 years for your file to file copy to go through, you should really think on compressing the data before you send it.

Enter the WinRAR
Theres a few good compression utilities you can use, PKUNZIP and WinZip are among what must be tons, but WinRAR is what *I* use, and so thats what I'm talking about. I was able to set it up so that I compressed all the music I owned and moved it to the place i wanted it sent and when it gets there I can have WinRAR unpack it all just like where it came from- it's a very sturdy little piece of program. Moving, Backing up, sharing, most people use some kind of utility when doing one or all of those activities and for my money (free, incidentally) WinRAR wins.

Upgrayed Pt. 1

When we left our intrepid hero..

I was kneeling sobbing, amidst piles of wires and case fragments. "It's dead, Jabs", Ben called casually from the couch sipping on grape Gatorade watching the latest Weeds episode. I'm kneeling here, sleeves rolled up with the wires and hard drives of my middle child laying around me and he's making Star Trek jokes. Assassination queue: +1. But he's right. I'm not getting this computer back together again and honestly, I don't want to. Too many of the components are too difficult to replace be it for price or availability, and I could use more oomph. Time to upgrade. But to what?

I've been here before. Time to shop, money to spend, and oceans of choices. I'm a firm believer in "The right tool for the right job". I don't get a 10-ton press when all i need is a tack hammer. Same thing for computers. I don't get the Quad Core Mega Awesome ULTRABLASTER CPU with 128 Terrabytes of hotRAM, if I'm not going to be singlehandedly completing the Colonization of Mars. It'd be nice to have all that power, but I built multiple machines for a reason. I tinker with a lot of projects and I like having a few different complete systems to share the load around. (also, when i totally blow it with one of my hair-brained schemes, I'm not totally screwed) So, what will i buy for this machine? First, Whats it goign to be doing? For a lot of people, its either Work, Home, or Super Face Melting Gaming Experience but for me, I need to expand on those topics. I do keep a modest computer for keeping up with emails and bills and news and such and I am a geek so I did build as much of a face melter as I could afford, but for work.. I cant have one single machine for "work". Between media storage and distribution , network tinkering, graphics and web page fiddling, etc.. theres a lot of concerns to keep in mind. For me, This new machine will be a new media distribution point. A new place to feed music, and video to my network. Which is good. Ive been meaning to upgrade the one I'm using and in doing so, I can build a dedicated network sniffer with the old media center. It's win/win , I'm bringing new purpose to an old box by building a new one.

Second, I do a salvage operation. What can I keep, What should I toss. DVD is a solid format not only for movies and stuff but for lots of data and has backward compatibility with CDs. If the DVD player works and you don't need to upgrade to a burner (and I don't) thats a no brainer. Keep it. The hard drives are kind of the same way, as long as their size is something you can deal with then keep them. I'm going to add storage to this computer, so ill be buying a hard drive, but really, I wont need much more than I've got. Which is good. I don't print my own money, so i try not to shovel it away when i don't have to. The CPU and Motherboard of this machine will have to go. For one they're bad, but also, the parts are older than i can replace reliably. If I decided to keep the motherboard and just do the processor, finding one would be a pain, id more than likely need to ship it to me. Same for the Ram that would go on the motherboard if i decided to keep *it*. All of that will need to be redone. I wont need much in the way of graphics, and quite honestly for what ill be doing I can probably find a motherboard with a graphics card , sound card, and network card built in. Thats a whole flock of birds with one stone and a bunch of crazy ricochets. So. Where to buy all this cra- er, equipment?

Stay tuned!

Welcome to NaBloPoMo?

Today kicks off NaBloPoMo! which, as I understand it is the month that everybody who has a blog posts something to that blog every single day to make up for the oceans of dead air that would otherwise await readers who stumble across it. And so. To jump right on the bandwagon:

This month!!!

Upgrayed! - Follow the trials of me trying to get a tiny machine off the ground on the cheap. Practicing what I preach! (Don't tell anybody)

Online Shopping for the holidays! - Where to shop, How to shop, Who not to give your credit card numbers to. Namely me.

My computer can do that?! - Email, Myspace, Websurfing, shopping... you say theres a word processor in here too? What else can my computer do? Plenty! I'll give you a heads up about some other uses.

The Inbetween Days- Bet you thought I sat hunched over the keyboard day and night thinking up things to type into my blog. Well, I do. But these are some things I think about doing if I ever decided to get up.

... And prolly much much more! Cause.. November has a whole lot of days.