What kinda computer do you use?

[Weetomuncher]

I was wondering what type of computers the YABS inhabitants use as I read the back page of PC Format magazine and it gives stats about the readers and their equipment every month.

I've got a lower middle of the range machine from Evesham.

It's got a Athlon 64 3200 processor, 512MB RAM, 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6200 graphics card, 200GB hard drive, 17" Viewsonic TFT monitor, two DVD drives (RW and regular), a floppy drive/card reader, triple speakers, web cam, Thrustmaster Ferrari joypad and a Epson Photo RX425 all in one printer. It is a smart looking machine in black with a silver panel at the lower third on the front.

My machine has dated a little since September (when I bought it) and I'll be bumping another half gig of RAM, a better graphics card (possibly a Geforce 7900 GTX 512MB) and a much faster processor (hopefully I'll get an FX-60).

The setup isn't that bad but I had to get what I could out of my student loan and I only had a choice of about six machines from the store I wanted to buy from at that price range (£820 for the machine plus extra for the printer and software although it has a great three year warranty package which bumped the price up a little compared to some of the other manufacturers.)

[anthony!]

Mac Dual G5, 17" flatscreen....thought I'm thinking of selling it for an inevitable Intel DualCore MacBook Pro 17".

[Weetomuncher]

I got some money unexpectedly recently (the day after the MacBook was launched!) and it was just enough for a MacBook but I plumped for a new TV and a display cabinet instead. Ho hum!

I've got my heart set on one as soon as I return to work though.

[sk716]

I built mine two years ago and upgrade as needed. A few parts were scavenged off of old computers.

AMD Athlon XP 2200
1GB of Kingston Tech RAM with 3 slots still available and Motherboard support for up to 4GB.

BenQ DVD+RW Drive.

BFG Tech nVidia GeForce 6800 GS OC w/ 256MB on board, heat sink, and fan.

Two Hard Drives, with total space of 120GB. I'll probably add another one soon. That 120GB goes quick when your storing Video files.

An old Compaq 17" Montior that is going to be replaced, most likely this week. I'm still going to stick with the classic big ol' bulky montior, LCD's are fine and dandy, but I prefer to be able to actually see my monitor if I shift position. And I feel that I get a more detailed image. The only reason I'm replacing this one is that it has a short and I have to beat it into submission everytime I turn it on, literally.

[The Beast Of Yucca Flats]

An H/P flatscreen with a LightScribe CD/DVD burner & a H/P PSC 1610 All-in-One Printer/Scanner/Copier.

[Forsaken_One]

I run an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ (runs at about 2 GhZ), 512 megs of DDR-SD RAM (one of my 512 sticks died on me so I'm getting another soon), ATI Radeon 9700+ and a basic 19" big-ass mother of a screen that I need to replace. Oh, and a DVD burner (+/-), mouse, and keyboard. Wheee.

I upgrade it every couple of years to manage to play video games somewhat well. Once it was state of the art, back when a 700 MhZ chip was state of the art. Then I upgraded it. It's about due for one, though I'll probably wait another six months or so.

[Spike-X]

Gigabyte K8NF-9 motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3200 CPU
1 Gb Kingston DDR400
Gigabyte/nVidia GForce 6200 256Mb graphics card
Western Digital 200Gb SATA HD
Pioneer 110 16x dual-layer DVD R/W
Samsung 24x CD R/W scrounged from my old computer
10 Gb HD scrounged from my old computer to use as boot drive, because for some reason the motherboard BIOS won't recognise the SATA HD. It works fine under Windows, as long as I don't install the chipset drivers. I need to sit down and solve this problem at some stage.

I'm currently running my old Packard Bell 17" CRT with bundled crap speakers, but I have these speakers (http://www.alteclansing.com/product_details_intl.asp?pID=GT5051R&region=asiapac&country_code=au) on layby, and plan to upgrade to a 19" LCD.

Oh, and Logitech EX-110 wireless mouse and keyboard.

[howyadoin]

Yes sir, that's my baby:

http://static.flickr.com/37/107542042_0dce960519_o.jpg

[Cream Filled Taco]

At work, I use three 20" LCD monitors (1600x1200 resolution each), connected to a Dell 2.somethingGHz, and an older Powermac G4 (due for an upgrade soon, as XCode is a slow piece of crap). Around a Gig of memory on each. Two monitors for Windows, one for the Mac (which can be switchboxed to use one of the other two monitors if I really need more space). I have two mice, and do all my Mac work left-handed, and Windows work right-handed. I have one keyboard shared between the two.

At home, we use a custom built Pentium 4 3.2GHz with 1GB of RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT graphics card, SLI motherboard, and 120GB Serial ATA hard drive. A normal 20" monitor at 1600x1200 resolution. It's the main gaming machine.

Second gaming machine is an older custom built Pentium 4 1.6GHz with 1GB of RAM, ATI Radeon 9800Pro video card, and an 80GB ATA hard drive. Another 20" monitor at 1600x1200 resolution. Also doubles as a file server, and my four year old's game computer.

Third machine is some handed down HP, which I don't know the specs on (probably a Pentium 2 or 3. Used in my ten year old's room for limited web browsing and some games.

We have two main laptops. One 12" Powerbook G4 1.5GHz, 512MB, 80GB hard drive. One white 12" iBook G3 around 700MHz, 512MB, 30GB hard drive.

[sk716]

...

At home, we use a custom built Pentium 4 3.2GHz with 1GB of RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT graphics card, SLI motherboard, and 120GB Serial ATA hard drive. A normal 20" monitor at 1600x1200 resolution. It's the main gaming machine.

Second gaming machine is an older custom built Pentium 4 1.6GHz with 1GB of RAM, ATI Radeon 9800Pro video card, and an 80GB ATA hard drive. Another 20" monitor at 1600x1200 resolution. Also doubles as a file server, and my four year old's game computer.

Third machine is some handed down HP, which I don't know the specs on (probably a Pentium 2 or 3. Used in my ten year old's room for limited web browsing and some games.

We have two main laptops. One 12" Powerbook G4 1.5GHz, 512MB, 80GB hard drive. One white 12" iBook G3 around 700MHz, 512MB, 30GB hard drive.


What the hell do you need five computers in one household for!?!?

[blackcanary_416]

I have a home based computer which is fairly new, flat screen and all with Windows XP. It's a Dell.

I also have a Dell laptop which is a bit older but it's my faithful companion.

[howyadoin]

I have two mice, and do all my Mac work left-handed, and Windows work right-handed.I honestly don't understand the point of that.

[Gilda Dent]

Alienware Aurora 7500:

AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 4800+

Alienware® NVidia nForce™4 SLI™ X16 Motherboard

512MB PCI-Express x16 ATI RADEON™ X1900 XTX

2GB DDR PC-3200 Memory

500GB Hard drive

Sony SDM-P234 Monitor (23" 16 x 9)

Gilda

[Tad Sivana]

Dual-processor Mac G5, 150 gig drive, dual monitors (17 & 21"), Radeon 9600 video, 3.5 gig of ram - HP designjet 30" plotter/printer, (I do a lot of drafting), and the usual complement of Adobe software.
It's my dream machine.

[Cream Filled Taco]

What the hell do you need five computers in one household for!?!?

Actually, there are ten functional computers (4 laptops, 6 PCs), but only five are in use. Of the five:

1. Dark Galaxy's COH/COV gamer, email, web browsing machine. Also doubles as my Photoshop, budget tracking, and here and there programming machine.

2. Computer for my four year old. He's a game addict on PC, XBox and Gamecube. He's been using a computer since he was two. Secondary COH/COV gamer (for when Dark Galaxy can convince me I have time to play the game), and common file server for all the laptops and PCs in use. This was our main computer before I built Dark Galaxy a new one a few months ago.

3. Ten year old's computer, in her room. Used for her computer games, and filtered web browsing.

4. My Powerbook laptop, which is my baby. After programming all day at work,I don't much like sitting at a desk to do much anything. Plus, I primarily do most of my coding in a Windows environment, so relaxing with some web browsing in a completely different OS is a nice change. I use it for video editing, iPod simulator, email, web stuff, watching DVDs and the Eric and Ray Show.

5. iBook laptop, which is Dark Galaxy's laptop. Was my laptop before my company paid for my Powerbook, so now she web browses on the couch as well.

See?!! All of them have their specific uses!

If it helps, I only paid for two of the five (three of the ten). All others were benefits from employers or hand me downs.

[Night Swordsman]

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?product=66271&lang=en&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&docname=bph06805&printable=yes&#N1001E

The ram is upgraded to 512,and there is some kinda video card now in here that cost me 100 bucks,plus a second hard drive.

Now SK,you know why my computer sucks.

[Cream Filled Taco]

I honestly don't understand the point of that.

I do cross-platform programming. I do the vast majority of actual coding in Visual Studio on Windows, as I can't stand CodeWarrior (and now we're forced into XCode for Mac on Intel). But I do large amounts of compiling and testing of what I've coded all day long. Most of the time, I have no need for a keyboard on the Mac, as I'm just using the mouse to navigate the compiling and testing of my work. All the code is shared over the network, so both machines work with live code. Standard day for me:

1. Write code on Windows for 5-15 minutes.
2. Start Windows compile with right hand, start Mac compile with left hand. Important note: I can see what is going on on both machines at all times.
3. One system will finish first (compiles can take anywhere from 30 seconds to six minutes, depending on what the changes were).
4. While the unfinished system is still working, I begin testing the app on the system that is finished. Many things can be tested with the mouse alone, and I've been dual mousing for years, so left hand mousing is almost as accurate as right.
5. While working on the finished system, I will see the other system finish, and without lifting my hand (as both hands are already on mice), I start testing that machine.

Often I am comparing performance, and graphics feedback, which makes dual mousing especially nice, as I can perform duplicate operations in real time. Sometimes I'm scrolling through pages of research, or reading email, on one machine, while testing on the other. Yes, I could use a switchbox on a single mouse, but I'd be pressing a damned button way more times a day than I'd like to count. I have tried a software solution that moves the cursor from the Mac screen to the Window's, but I didn't like it, as it stopped me from easily doing little things on each system at the same time, without doing lots of mouse movement across three screens. Only one of the other programmers uses the dual mouse method, but he has them sitting both on his right side, as he couldn't get his brain to stop hurting when he tried to do one on each side, let alone both at the same time. Everyone else uses a switchbox to swap keyboard/mouse/main monitor between OS's.

My boss really likes that I do it, as it enforces checking things a lot more often on Windows and Mac. Most of our programmers have their preference OS, and code everything for days on it, and sometimes even forget to check it on the other OS before they check all the code in for others to use. Quite often, someone who only uses Windows will get a number of Mac loving programmers informing them that their code doesn't work, and vice versa, as they completely forgot to compile on the second system.

Another reason I started doing it was that I hate waiting around for things. This way, I can always be doing something. Probably wouldn't surprise you to know that when I had dialup, I would have at least five browser windows open (tabs are my heaven), and read whichever one was done loading first. DSL fixed that, but still, a common behavior for me on CBR is to have 5-10 thread topics open at the same time, while having the original thread list still open for more clicking when I'm done with those.

So there ya go.

[matterconsumer]

I have a happy Mac :)

[Cam63]

A steam powered one with " Watt " stamped on the side.

[Gilda Dent]

A steam powered one with " Watt " stamped on the side.

You have a Difference Engine! That is so cool.

Gilda

[Cam63]

Yeah, but I hate having to load coal into the fucker every half hour.

[Weetomuncher]

James Watt was from my original hometown (Greenock, Scotland) and it is the UK HQ of IBM.

[Sharpandpointies]

Inspiron 6000 laptop.

[Weetomuncher]

I feel like going back to using my trusty ZX Spectrum as it was far more fun than the depressing nonsense they call modern day computing.

I wish I could go back to the days of massive tournaments on Emlyn Hughes International Soccer (eeee), oh wait that was yesterday!

[howyadoin]

So there ya go.Y'know, that actually made a lot of sense. Thanks.