Like I was saying, I'm getting a Dell. As I wrote about in the previous article, my PC has been in a state of decline for a number of months (it's a nearly 3.5 years old Sony Vaio) and it appears that the Y2K Bug finally caught up with it, as I came home from our New Year's Eve night in the city yesterday to find my computer unresponsive and near-dead.
Unfortunately, time and current end-of-year finances aren't about to allow me the luxury of building my own custom PC this time around like I was hoping to (with help from a friend who actually knows how to do such a thing) and I had to call Dell. I've been reading good things about their new high-end XPS gaming machines on the various message boards and figured that I would give them a shot. Here's what I have coming later this week.
- Pentium D Processor 840 w/Dual Core 3.20 GHz
- 2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 533 MHz
- Dual PCI Express x16 256MB nVidia GeForce 6800 graphics cards running w/SLI
- 250 GB Serial ATA harddrive @7200 rpm
- 160 GB Serial ATA harddrive @7200 rpm
- 16x DVD-ROM Drive
- 16x DVD+/-RW w/double-layer writing capability
- 13 in 1 media card reader
- Integrated 7.1 surround sound audio
- Microsoft Windows XP 2005 Media Center Edition
- Microsoft Office Basic
I basically started with their super-expensive $4,700 configuration and deleted the monitor and speakers and scaled back a few other options to get down to a more manageable price. I got 18 months of 0% interest out of them and they even bumped up the warranty from 1 to 3 years free of charge and took off about $200 worth of sales tax to help me squeeze this baby under the credit limit they ok'd me for.
With all of the video and photo editing I do on a near-daily basis for work, not to mention gaming, my off-the-shelf options were limited and I legitimately have to aim for the upper end of the consumer market. I would have loved to just let 'er rip with twin Geforce 7800's but that's almost a $500 upgrade from the two slightly smaller monsters that I did buy. Of course, all of this customizing was lost on my wife. She wasn't really sure what any of the parts of a PC do and why I would need (i.e. want) two video cards. Not only was I talking a foreign language to her, but I was doing a pretty bad job of it too. And then I came up with following explanation that seemed to work: My current computer has the equivalent of a Playstation 2 under the hood. The new one will have the equivalent of two Xbox 360's. Of course, we know that's not literally true but it's a damn good analogy that she was able to understand. Feel free to use it.
Now that I wrote about the new machine, I'm actually feeling better. Maybe this year won't suck after all? Who knows? Anyway, I'd write more about the new PC and my daily computing habits (i.e. my favorite porn sites) but it's dinner time and I want my baby back, baby back, baby back, baby back ribs. And barbecue sauce.
Okay, maybe I couldn't go the entire post...
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