Quote:
Originally posted by jsmith
to each his own, i guess. i love fiddling with PC's but i do a lot of planning and never jump in and compromise my main machine on a whim. i'll do an upgrade every couple of years, which usually amounts to building a new PC from the new parts i've been collecting. the obsolescence curve is steeper these days and it's not worth trying to retrofit old parts with the new technology. when the time comes to build the new system, i set up shop on a table and work on it in my spare time. it never takes more than a couple of days and i never have down time. the last time was pretty interesting because i decided to mess with overclocking - learned a whole bunch of now obsolete stuff  in the process.
computers are becoming more and more essential to everyday life just like automobiles are. i don't see why you should approach a PC project any differently than you would a car project. depending on what you do for a living down time on either one could have quite an impact...
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The upgrade itself was planned, just not as soon as I ended up doing so. My main problem with that machine has been its reliability. It was built from scratch about 4 years ago, and I had numerous problems with it - even back then. That thing seemed to always balk at anything being added. It was my intention to pay off some credit card debt, and then pay cash for its replacement, which was going to be built prior to dismantling the old one. The upgrade simply came down to asking myself why I was trying so hard to keep an obsolete pice of junk running for a few more months - especially one that I hated as much as I hated that machine. The new one was a joy to build. Everything went smoothly from start to finish. The computer powered up for the first time in less than an hour, and three hours after this, I was ready to transfer the old information that was still on the old hard drive. I had it up and running, ready to work (except the modem) by 04:00 Thursday morning. The modem itself balked, but was still running before I left for work Thursday afternoon.
This machine is TOTALLY kicking ass.
I started rebuilding my MP3 library that was lost to a virus last month. I was procrastinating on this due to the time that I thought I was going to have to divulge into the process. The new one is compiling the MP3's in about 1/4th the time. I also burned a couple of direct copies of CD's that I bought recently. I had these done in about 3 minutes each!! Methinks I'm going to enjoy this one immensely.