Time for an upgrade

It appears after the tax attack from Nebraska & the Fed, my bonus wasn't so good. Originally I planned on upgrading my main PC to a sweet new one with multi-core/mega RAM/Windows 7 64bit uberness but that's not gonna happen.
Instead I will pay a little love and attention to my crusty but trusty old Windows XP Pro eMachines W3050 I picked up about 6 years ago which has endured the likes of World of Warcraft and other games and was also my main programming box. Honestly, it is a good machine. I'm really surprised and proud at how well it's endured over the past few years. I know it's time to upgrade but I just can't afford it right now, maybe next year.

So my plan is this, I'll talk it over with the boss (a.k.a. the wife and financial specialist) and see what we can do. I would like to pick up a new case, power supply, video card and the sweet NXT Sentry LX LCD fan controller. Now you may be saying "Dude, why waste all that on an old machine?" well it's a pretty simple answer, I'll keep the core components like the motherboard, CPU, RAM and hard drive and just swap them out. Then over time, I will replace those pieces with newer ones in my new case. I'll turn my existing system into a pure gaming system since I have my new laptop which I'll do all my other stuff on. When I'm ready to upgrade the other pieces I can give it a thorough overhaul.

The existing core components aren't to bad actually, an AMD (single core) 2.33Mhz processor and 2GB of RAM. Now it doesn't have the lightning speed that the new stuff has but it's solid. Enough for running WoW so I'm good there. Since it will be set up purely for gaming there's not much else that I'll have running to eat up bandwidth on it. I'm not a high end gamer but my wife and I play together as our "together time" so I don't need anything awesomely fast.

So what am I looking at for upgrades?
Well lets start with the case. I found this case and Power Supply Unit combo from Tiger Direct, the Diablotek Mid Tower Case and 450Watt ATX PSU Bundle.

I like this case because of it's cooling features. 120mm fan in the front and back and top, side panel vents, and the PSU is located at the bottom which blows the heat up instead of down. I like this because with the other fans (back and top) it will help remove it from the case.

Video Card
I'm going with the 1GB EVGA GeForce 9400 GT Video Card. My existing board doesn't support PCIe and this one is PCI compliant. I figure it will get me through for a couple more years and help take some of the load of the existing 2GB of RAM I have installed.

Finally...THE UBERNESS!
Ok, I know it's probably not really that uber but to me it is. The NZXT Sentry LX LCD Fan Controller.

The LCD readout, the cool graphics, oh, and it controls the fans too! Just looking at it makes me giddy with glee especially when I hear my wife ask "What the heck is that thing? You launching missiles or something over there?" Although after doing a little research I found that it only supports fans with three prong connectors and not four. From what I can see in the pics for the fans that come with the case those are four prong. That’s ok though, at least I’ll have this part out of the way and can still use the other features and can upgrade the fans at a later date.

After totaling up these pieces and my wife’s new CPU the total comes to about $300. Not to bad for a start of a great system build. As the project progresses I’ll be sure to post updates and pictures along with reviews of everything.

Hey old friend, how ya been…

I was in the process of cleaning p some old electronic stuff (junk according to my wife) the other day and I came across an old treasure, my original Apple Newton Message Pad 100.

I remember when the Newton first came out, there was such a buzz in the industry. people couldn’t wait for it to get here, all the cool things it could do, what a revolutionary concept and all from the mind of Steve Jobs. This man has got to be a genius!

I had the good fortune to be working for Apple support through a different company at the time and got to be one of the level one support people for the Newton, one of the best gigs I ever had. Getting to play with cutting edge technology and talking with people who also shared this love. It was great.

My Newton still works and fired up without any issues and was there, warmly looking at me like a long lost friend. Needless to say I didn’t get much cleaning done as my old friend and I spent a few hours re-aquatinting ourselves. While we were playing I realized how powerful and useful this thing was for its time. A personal Information Manager, notepad, communications (although very antiquated now), entertainment and more. The thing I think I loved most about the Newton was the handwriting recognition. It was so fluid and good, I never had much of an issue getting it to recognize my handwriting.

Recently Apple unveiled the next generation of the iPad. Although Apple completely disassociates the I series (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) from the Newton, I like to think that if it wasn’t for the Newton we may not even have the I series. I also like to think that if Apple just incorporated the handwriting recognition into the I series, the Newton would be reborn. If you think about it the I series has pretty much everything the Newton had and more.

I have an iPod Touch and adore it. I thought about getting an iPhone when my contract with Verizon reached it upgrade point but I didn’t. I went with an Android (the R2-D2 model. Hey, I’m a nerd!) and actually kind of glad I did. the biggest reason I went with the Droid was the Wi-Fi hotspot ability which as far as I could tell the iPhone doesn’t offer. (I did a lot of research and never could get a yes or no, just a lot of useless info around the hotspot ability.)

I had tried several other PIM type devices over the years but always came back to my Newton. There's just something about it whether it’s the ease of use or the cool retro geek factor, my Newton is still there. I’ve thought about selling it and maybe another person would enjoy what I see in it but then again, it’s like cutting off your pinky, you don’t really need it but you will miss it. So for now my Newton is packed away safely in a box and will again return when I get frustrated with my latest gadget.