Went to Fry’s to return the hard drive; was hoping that they could match the rebate, but they couldn’t. Afterwards, drove around looking for a Circuit City, finally found one in San Mateo. Unfortunately, my Visa got denied, which I expected, but was hoping it would go through anyway. So stopped by In-n-Out to get dinner and headed home.
Still haven’t read Harry Potter yet because I promised Kim and Barbara that I would watch Lilo and Stitch with them. Worried that if I start to read it tonight after the movie, I will be up all night long. So I might not read it until tomorrow night. Guess it’s a good thing that I’m staying off of Livejournal or Blurty right now.
So, in order to keep my mind off of Harry Potter, I have been playing the Bomberman game that I got. Nothing like the old school classics to keep you entertained for hours. It’s kinda of a drag playing with the keyboard, but I’m doing O.K. on all of them so far. Still, I might go ahead and dig out my MS Gamepad and hook that up to use.
So with the hard drive issue out of the way, I’m now trying to decide on which route to go. My computer is still in pretty decent shape for the most part. Here are the specs…
AMD Althon 1.2Ghz
ASUS A7A266 Motherboard
PC2100 DDR 512 RAM
20GB IBM Deskstar hard Drive
120GB 8MB cache Western Digital hard Drive
ATI Raedon 7200 VIVO video card
Samsung SyncMaster 955DF 19″ monitor
Creative SoundBlaster MP3+ sound card
Pioneer 16x slot loading DVD drive
PlexWriter 12/10/32 CD-RW drive
Microsoft USB Intellimouse Explorer
Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite
HP Deskjet 812c Printer
HP 3400 ScanJet Scanner
Not the most recent system, but it stills holds up. There are only two things wrong with it right now. The first is that the floppy drive doesn’t work for some reason. Since I rarely if ever use floppies, that isn’t that big of a problem. The main problem with the system is the noise that it creates. I would give anything for a
quieter computer. And that leads to my dilemma. Do I want to keep this system and just upgrade it, or do I want to buy a new computer, like a nice and quiet Dell. If I upgrade, the only thing I would upgrade is the video card up to a Raedon 9000 All-In-Wonder so I could watch TV on my computer. The sound card is alright for my needs, so I don’t need to buy a new sound card or speakers. The monitor is big enough for me (and heavy enough.) I would need to by a new mouse an maybe a new keyboard. The mouse is a def. yes; I would get a gyromouse. The keyboard is an iffy; it is long enough to reach the bed, but a wireless one would be better. I rarely use my CD burner, and I don’t need a DVD burner for anything. A new processor would be nice but not necessary. And RAM; well always use more RAM. So let’s see…
AMD AthlonXP 2000 – $56
2 Sticks of PC2100 DDR 512MB RAM – $70 ea.
ATI All In Wonder Radeon 9000 – $145
Ultra Cordless Optical Mouse – $80
Wireless Keyboard – $25
Total – $306-$446 depending if I get the RAM or not
Other option is to just buy a new computer. However, my neck is killing me, so I think I rant more about the computer later…
