I really need a new computer. I bought this computer so long ago that I regularly receive phone calls from paleontologists who want to excavate the data buried deep within its boring beige exterior. How can I be Mighty when I can read War and Peace before my computer finishes booting? Every time I double-click, the hard drive spends the next couple of minutes protesting so loudly that the garbage men knocked on my door and asked me to keep the noise down. Just yesterday, while waiting for PhotoShop to load, I was able to make a life-sized llama out of duct tape, a few coat hangers and some old socks.
I sold it on ebay for $135.
Don’t get me wrong, I really love this computer and it’s served me well over the last few *coughfivecough* years, but I think it’s high-time I got me a new one. Especially since I make my living with it. There comes a time when even old reliable becomes just plain old and not worth upgrading. Why, I bet that if I hadn’t found that book of ‘Ancient Computer Resurrection Rites and Other Satanic Rituals of Evil’ it would have died long ago. So even though I enjoy painting ‘abort, retry, fail’ on my nekkid body while chanting the entire text to The Road Ahead in C++ and dancing to the windows startup song, I think it’s time I broke open the old wallet and bought a new computer. I’m really tired of the strange looks I get from my neighbors the next day. Especially when they shield the eyes of their children and whisper, “Don’t look at the crazy-man, Tommy. He’ll eat your fingers.”
In my defense, it was only one finger and the doctor says the operation was successful so it should heal fine. If the little brat had only let me see his limited edition, gold-foil Pikachu card… bastard.
Anywaste, I’m a busy little Geek today because I’m having a Monday Night Football gathering tonight and I have to get ready. I’m making Cream of Pumpkin Curry Soup, Filet De Tofu with Apricot Dijon Sauce and baklava for dessert. I’ve even made fondue for a snack during the game because nothing says ‘Guys Football Night’ like fondue.
Yeah. Right.
Actually, I’ll probably be making seven-digit pizza or, if I must cook, tacos. Hot, spicy, death-to-your-colon, my-anus-is-bleeding-lava tacos. I think my tacos are really good and a recent survey of prison inmates on death row agrees. According to the study, the inmates preferred eating my tacos to a lethal injection almost 2 to 1!
Wow. If that’s not a ringing endorsement, then I don’t know what is.
Five years old? Mine’s only a little over two and already I’m seriously lusting after something faster, bigger and shinier. I mean, you can only upgrade to a certain extent, right?
Of course, I do have an utterly pathetic attention span, which means I’m very easily distracted by shiny new toys.
I finally ‘bit the bullet’ and got a new system recently. 1.3GHz Athlon, 512MB RAM, 90GB total HDD space, GeForce 3 card, Sound Blaster PCI 512, TDK VeloCD 24x/10x/40x CD-RW drive and a beaten and bruised wallet soon followed.
On the upside, it’s sooo much faster than my old K6-2/400. You should upgrade, it hurts at first, but if you can forget how much it costs, it’s loads of fun!
I just ‘borrowed’ a 800 chip to replace my 633.
Now my PC crashes 20% faster!
What I wouldnt do for the dual 900 I saw yesterday.. drool.. drool..
Anyway, my truly keen upgrade tip right now is the $32 256M memory on buy.com. If you want to give your PC a quick kick in the a$$, this should do it. Hard Drives are cheep too, as $100 should get you 30-40 gigs.
OH YEAH! I forgot.. I’ve heard some firsthand stories of XP crashing some of the major graphics software.. Corel, Illustrator, Photoshop.. Apparantly, they all crash if you try to SAVE AS, then try to BROWSE to another directory.
Not having XP, I havent gotten a chance to try it. But this is only person that I’ve talked to so far who has graphics progs running under XP.
Be careful when you buy that new PC.. and have your 98SE, NT4 or 2000 disks just in case.
I wouldn’t get a new computer with XP at all. MS is shoveling XP out the door early just to beat the DOJ and we all know how reliable and stable MS products are when they’re released on time, let alone early. I’ll stick with WinMe or Win2K, thankyouverymuch. At least I know what I’m getting into with them and I don’t have to kowtow to the Great and Powerful Wizard of Win every time I turn on MY machine.
It still galls me that MS wants to decide when and how I can use something I’ve paid for. Next thing you know, they’ll be making MS food and if you add too many ingredients you’ll have to call Bill and ask permission to eat.
I’ve been running XP a while and I use Photoshop 6.0 on a regular basis. I just tried what you said and I had no problems whatsoever.
As for the whole Product Activation thing: don’t buy XP. Find yourself a nice site to download the Corporate Edition – no activation required. Even if I bought XP I wouldn’t activate it, I’d get the crack for it.