[geeks] Wow, PCs are cheap...

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: james <james at jdfogg.com>
>Date: 2008/08/22 Fri PM 10:37:31 EDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Wow, PCs are cheap...

<snip>

>I got a similarly configured Vostro (400 I think) about 6
>months ago. It's my Winders desktop (running XP). I use it
>constantly and often run 6 or more heavy applications
>simultaneously. I have never had to reboot it, and it only
>gets turned off a few times a year. The wide monitor was a
>bit hard to get used to, but it seems natural now.

Well, my father in-law will probably not run it at it's highest resolution - his aging eyes will benefit from increased screen area...

>It replaced a Dell PowerEdge 600SC that I got when they
>discontinued them and sold them cheap with a 2.4Ghz CPU and
>it now has 2G of memory. It is now my main Linux desktop. It
>spends a lot of time powered down since it's noisy.

Really, I'm not familiar with the 600SC, but the various cheap Dell tower servers I have are all *very* quiet, my 1U PE750 server is loud, but not *too* loud, for a 1U...

>I've had luck with cheap Dells. I don't know how whitebox
>vendors stay in business.

I only build a PC when I want to use a particular component (for some reason), otherwise I've sworn-off build-it yourself machines. FOr instance, I want to put together a small storage server based on a SuperMicro PDSMB-LN2+ mATX MB [0] that sells for about $135 [1], I want to play with the TPM module and WinServer 2008, and this is about as cheap a MB as practical, has extensive Server support (console redirect, etc.) and with two Intel GbE ports and taking 8 Gig RAM, it looks nice. It has an odd expansion slot arrangement, mainly for use with a riser in a 1U case I assume.

Lionel

[0] http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon3000/3000/PDSML-LN2+.cfm

[1] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182126