Two pieces of exciting news, both shopping related. (1) I finally bought a coffee table. This is totally wack, but I actually purchased the sucker from Walmart. After spending a few hours this past Monday with Mom looking (in three different stores!) I thought I had found a contender at Target. But I soon decided to check out Walmart just for kicks, and found this. They technically call it a TV stand, but it was just the right dimensions and look for what I had been seeking, so I went for it. It should arrive sometime next week. Once it's here I can take some pics of my mostly complete apartment and post em.
Also arriving next week will be ...(drumroll, please)... my new computer! (Boy am I going to have a painful credit card bill this month!) I have owned my current laptop for almost four years (it will be four this April) which as most of you know is around the usual lifespan of a PC. It has started to get very unreliable when playing DVDs or burning CDs, which is a pain, but bearable. Couple this, however, with its shaky security history (2 crashes, once with an unbelievable 156 pieces of spyware) and you can see why my mind has been leaning towards upgrading. Another factor that influenced my decision was that my laptop was never quite capable of the gaming I wanted to get out of it. I purchased CounterStrike: Source and Half Life 2 my senior year of college for I think around $80 and was never able to even open Half Life and had CounterStrike crash on me all the time. I am eager to get back to them both, as well as to finally purchase the copy of "The Sims: 2" that Keith has had on hold for me for ages at GameStop. I might finally get a clue about what had Lydia glued to the computer our freshman year of college. And with my new system (specs forthcoming) other games I've always wanted to play also become feasible: Civ 4, Age of Empires 3, Age of Mythology, and maybe I could even try to play DOTA with the boys now and again! Or at least go on and talk to them. So, without further ado, the specs:
- Operating System: Windows XP Media Center 05 (fuck that Vista shit…for now at least)
- Memory: 1 GB DDR2 SD RAM 667MHz
- Hard Drive: 250 GB (7200 RPM)
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.8 GHz)
- Video Card: 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 Graphics Card (I'm told this is pretty good)
- Drives: 48X CDRW/DVD Combo Drive and 16X DVD +/- RW Drive
- Bluetooth Keyboard and Optical Mouse
- 17 inch flat panel LCD monitor
It's nice, yeah? What I found amazing was that it is already (pretty much) impossible to buy a new PC that has XP not Vista. So I decided to go refurbished. I had been thinking about refurbished already anyway because of the price, but it's my first time so I was a bit nervous. Hopefully it should be fine. I had some help from Randolph in picking out my machine. In the end it cost me a grand for everything. Which I think is pretty good for what I ended up with. A little more than I wanted to spend, but the price I paid for avoiding Vista. The new PCs actually cost less in some situations, because there are all these Vista promos out right now. Although most of those computers don't have a graphics card as good as mine. Anyway according to Mrand it should be a "beast of a machine" once it's all nice and cleaned up. As for speakers and a printer, I'm going to use the ones I already had to go with my laptop, since the PC didn't come with and I don't want any more costs right now. So it's been an exciting week of spending, and hopefully now I'm done for awhile.
Also arriving next week will be ...(drumroll, please)... my new computer! (Boy am I going to have a painful credit card bill this month!) I have owned my current laptop for almost four years (it will be four this April) which as most of you know is around the usual lifespan of a PC. It has started to get very unreliable when playing DVDs or burning CDs, which is a pain, but bearable. Couple this, however, with its shaky security history (2 crashes, once with an unbelievable 156 pieces of spyware) and you can see why my mind has been leaning towards upgrading. Another factor that influenced my decision was that my laptop was never quite capable of the gaming I wanted to get out of it. I purchased CounterStrike: Source and Half Life 2 my senior year of college for I think around $80 and was never able to even open Half Life and had CounterStrike crash on me all the time. I am eager to get back to them both, as well as to finally purchase the copy of "The Sims: 2" that Keith has had on hold for me for ages at GameStop. I might finally get a clue about what had Lydia glued to the computer our freshman year of college. And with my new system (specs forthcoming) other games I've always wanted to play also become feasible: Civ 4, Age of Empires 3, Age of Mythology, and maybe I could even try to play DOTA with the boys now and again! Or at least go on and talk to them. So, without further ado, the specs:
- Operating System: Windows XP Media Center 05 (fuck that Vista shit…for now at least)
- Memory: 1 GB DDR2 SD RAM 667MHz
- Hard Drive: 250 GB (7200 RPM)
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.8 GHz)
- Video Card: 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 Graphics Card (I'm told this is pretty good)
- Drives: 48X CDRW/DVD Combo Drive and 16X DVD +/- RW Drive
- Bluetooth Keyboard and Optical Mouse
- 17 inch flat panel LCD monitor
It's nice, yeah? What I found amazing was that it is already (pretty much) impossible to buy a new PC that has XP not Vista. So I decided to go refurbished. I had been thinking about refurbished already anyway because of the price, but it's my first time so I was a bit nervous. Hopefully it should be fine. I had some help from Randolph in picking out my machine. In the end it cost me a grand for everything. Which I think is pretty good for what I ended up with. A little more than I wanted to spend, but the price I paid for avoiding Vista. The new PCs actually cost less in some situations, because there are all these Vista promos out right now. Although most of those computers don't have a graphics card as good as mine. Anyway according to Mrand it should be a "beast of a machine" once it's all nice and cleaned up. As for speakers and a printer, I'm going to use the ones I already had to go with my laptop, since the PC didn't come with and I don't want any more costs right now. So it's been an exciting week of spending, and hopefully now I'm done for awhile.
3 comments:
I like the table! I think I looked at something like that when we were buying our new coffee table.
I just got my first laptop since 1995. Boy have they changed.
I just want to point out that the sucker weighs about 200 lbs. The coffee table, not the computer.
Nice to have finally found your blog, Bethie!
i'm so glad you found me too! and it does way a million pounds, which i was disappointed to see when i got it (thinking what a pain it would be in all future moves). luckily for me it came shipped broken, so i got to return it, get all my money back (including shipping) and pick out something that weighs less. woohoo!
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