Philoking.comfrom Jason Burns’ perspective…

It’s amazing how much cheaper computers are these days. I had been working out what I was going to do for a few weeks now, today the decision was made and I decided to upgrade my aging 2.4Ghz P4 to a new machine running Windows Vista.

There are several reasons behind this decision. First I wanted a Vista machine, I am constantly talking about it, I am part of a team to promote it at work, yet I still did not use it at home.

Second, it was time to step up to Dual Core. My machine was getting a little long in the tooth for power.

Lastly, I wanted to check out some of the newer PC games. I had all but decided to order a custom machine from Cyberpowerpc.com when I decided to take a trip to Costco today and see what they had to offer.

I have been out of the “hating consumer machines” mode for awhile now. Sure you have to remove a ridiculous amount of crap software to get it clean (one thing I love about Apple btw, no garbage software on their computers…this isn’t a slam on Microsoft, it’s a slam on HP, they are probably the worst!) So I removed all the crap and started getting stuff set up.

The computer is pretty decent, the basic specs are:

• Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz Processor
• 4GB Ram
• 400Gb Hard Disk
• nVidia GeForce 8600 GT with 512MB Dedicated VRam
• Windows Vista Home Premium SP 1
• 24″ 1920×1200 LCD Monitor

Not a bad system.

I am still installing software (waiting on Lord of The Rings Online to finish updating, sheesh. Look at the image, that’s right 11,104 updates!)

Then I will finish up with the Macromedia Suite, Office and Photoshop. After that I can start putting this machine through the paces. So far it’s quite snappy and I am really pleased with the features, appearance, etc.

I will get an update out by the weekend with some benchmarks and real world performance tests.

Last word, Damn….24″ Monitors are freakin’ huge.