I bought a new PC. I got it from Best Buy. I got this one. It’s an HP with an AMD processor, 8GB ram, and a 1.5TB hard drive.
I used Best Buy’s “buy online and pickup in store” feature. My old PC’s fan was breaking. My budget was $1000-$1500, but I got a nice one for $600. Maybe I’ll upgrade in 2-3 years instead of 4.
There was one slightly amusing bit. I don’t have 8GB of free ram, only 7.5GB. 0.5GB is used for video memory. I have shared video card memory and CPU memory. Also, 15GB of my HD space is reserved for my image of Windows 7, in case I ever need to reinstall.
They didn’t give me a Windows install DVD! It turns out that I’m supposed to make my own. If I get a USB flash drive, I can make an “emergency reinstall Windows” boot disk. I have a 4GB flash thumb drive, but the reinstall requires 10GB. (I was disappointed that my old motherboard didn’t support “boot from USB drive”. Maybe I’ll make an ubuntu install on the 4GB flash drive.)
I also can burn myself a Windows emergency reboot DVD. Maybe I’ll burn one? The flash drive sounds like a cleaner/better option.
They keyboard they ship with it is a real POS. My old Microsoft Natural keyboard won’t work, because it isn’t USB connectable. I’ll buy a new one. They’re not that expensive.
Burning the DVDs are usually a better option. If you store them in a safe place they have a good shelf-life and you can’t accidentally overwrite them. If you don’t burn your own disks HP will charge you if you need them to restore from in the future.
It’s usually recommended that you burn them as soon as you boot the computer before even connecting it to the network. So I would pick up a few DVDs and burn them as soon as possible.
-Tim
I’ll wait until Tuesday to go to the store and get the USB drive. I might also make DVDs.
If it was *THAT* bad, I could always buy a copy of Vista and resintall from that.
I’m trying to figure out how to get rid of the garbage they bundled with it. It keeps nagging me to buy Norton antivirus. It’s like a virus.
Also, wearing a lot of gold is just asking to get robbed.
> They didn’t give me a Windows install DVD!
If you were a real man you would be using FreeBSD!
I might make a Linux boot on my other USB thumb drive.
There’s still a reason to have Windows. Many games are written for Windows but not Linux.
Also, wearing gold coins around your neck is just asking to get robbed.
If you were a real man you would be wearing your gold coins around your neck as a medallion!