My computer set-up
March 18, 2007
Yep I have one, well 2 and another which is sort of dead.
Hardware
I recently bought a Rock Extreme CTX Pro laptop. A laptop has been on my luxury-to-buy list for years and I decided to buy one when a much lower than expected VAT bill came my way one month. It’s amazing but eats up battery power like nobody’s business. It’s to get me away from my monster desktop machine upstairs as it’s basically a desktop replacement machine. I have a 64 bit AMD 3200+ 2GHz machine. Quick tip here, don’t buy anything 64 bit, not until 2008 anyway, bloody hard to get drivers (as its too expensive for developers to develop on) and some software will just point-blank refuse to work on it. My machine has a lush 1.5Gb of RAM and a snazzy nVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT gfx card in it. It’s dog slow at the moment. I’m about to upgrade to a 2GHz 3800+ AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core CPU and up the RAM to a total of 2.5Gb.
I’ve bought a Buffalo NAS external hard drive and put all my data files on it (PST, pictures, music, etc). The purpose? So that I can access all this from my desktop and my laptop without having 2 computer on at once. I can log on to mail and browse my files on my laptop without turning on my desktop machine. All I need is the external drive and my wireless router on and Bob’s your Uncle. But yeah, it’s a little slow. I could get a faster wireless router, which might be on the cards but the new spec for wireless isn’t due to be rectified until 2008/2009! It’s not that bad just a little annoying.
Software
The desktop runs Windows XP Pro x64. Personally I cannot seen any difference performance-wise. The software itself is identical to its 32 bit relative. I was eager to upgrade to Vista but Microsoft had stupidly slapped a huge price tag on it so it’s a big no no. Besides, there are no drivers for 64 bit computers. As for my laptop, that runs Media Centre, sorry Center, or MCE. Not much difference to Pro. It has a nice fluffy front end for Media Center for when you’re watching DVDs or TV but nothing else special.
I will be writing up a large list of all my other essential software (non-photography) so keep an eye out for a post on this.
The Vista Question
So upgrade to Vista? I touched on it above but to me it seems far too expensive unless you buy the OEM version and that means a clean install (no upgrade option normally). I have XP Pro on my desktop and MCE on my laptop and that limits me to the Ultimate version. And at £250+ for the upgrade version alone I can safely say I’ll be going for the OEM editions, especially as I will be buying the new Office (full version again) soon. I’ve been beta testing the Office 2007 version – its’ great btw – and the license will run out very soon.
Ignoring the stupid price tag, for me as a 64 bit desktop user it’s a no brainer as currently Vista x64 doesn’t allow any digitally unsigned device drivers to be installed and so I reckon lot of my kit won’t work with it. By the way, all variations, Ultimate, Home, Basic, as well as 32bit and 64bit versions are bundled with ALL versions of Vista on the same CD/DVD, you’re just buying the license key to unlock the version(s). I won’t have the same problem with my laptop but that is down to software and the x64 edition will refuse to run any 16 bit applications, unlike the 32 bit edition. So a bit iffy there as there are still, surprisingly, some apps running at 16bit and I’m sure some essential software for me is 16 bit. It’s recommend that you have 1Gb of RAM and if your hardware works on XP then it “should” work on Vista (32bit version anyway). Performance is supposed to be the same, so it’s not all bad. It has been said, though, that we should check our security software and find Vista updates first. PC Pro says there shouldn’t be any need to install any third party firewall program, especially if you’re using a router. The spyware software isn’t too bad either (though I’ll stick with Spyware Doctor for now). Still no virus software bundled, shame but I’m happy with ZoneAlarm/Avast. DirectX10 sounds like a good deal, especially for development but there aren’t any games for it yet. Only Crysis is on the horizon and that’s not out until April. Vista does look pretty, but not for me not yet. If I get Vista for my laptop then I’ll write an article for my views.
.kol tregaskes.photography site: squashyfrog.com
.photography blog: blog.squashyfrog.com
.flickr photostream: flickr.com/photos/koltregaskes
.deviantart gallery: koltregaskes.deviantart.com
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