Thursday 12 February 2004

Pic of the day: The new Scaleo is actually smaller than the previous, and possibly the most silent desktop machine I have ever had.

New PC

Today was not only payday. It was also the day I got a new computer. The two facts are not directly related. I also got my first wireless network and indeed my first home network at all.

I ordered the Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo a few weeks ago. The name is not entirely misleading: This is my third Scaleo desktop computer in a row, and they are roughly the same design only more powerful. Although in this latest incarnation the floppy disk is finally gone, replaced by a device that reads and writes a number of different RAM cards. I suppose flash RAM is the floppy of the future then; but I still have dozens of floppies lying around. Not that I use more than one of them, and only rarely.

Be that as it may, the retailer (Telehuset Kristiansand) called me at work and said the computer was ready. The last week or two they had waited for a particular RAM chip which was evidently in short supply and high demand. I had ordered the machine with 1GB RAM rather than the standard 256MB (what were they thinking?) but the seller had not known the motherboard only had slots for two RAM modules. So instead of using cheap 256MB chips they had to buy the still expensive 512MB. Luckily for me we had already agreed on a price and they stuck with it. I doubt they actually lost money anyway.

I took a taxi home. More about that another day, I think.

***

I can't believe how many cardboard boxes I have. Then again, I cannot believe how many computers, printers and peripherals I have in various states of disrepair or outdatedness. Luckily I remember there was some guy at work looking for computer speakers, so at least I can get rid of those. But I can almost not get through the storage room anymore due to the sheer volume of boxes.

Setting up the computer was a snap. I took it to the bedroom, after pulling all cables off the WinME machine there. I connected the cables to the same places on the new and turned it on. It ran right out of the box. Then again, Telehuset had tested it before they called.

I had thoughtfully bought two small Bluetooth USB devices. Blueteeth? They kinda look the part, if Blue has pretty big teeth. Anyway. After clicking wildly in the menu choices, I suddenly had a very local area network built on Bluetooth, and could access my Internet from the bedroom. Look, no wires!! I had not looked forward to having to migrate to another new machine, having to install again all the programs I am already comfortable with. Not to mention that I have probably lost the registration codes to a few of them in the chaos on and near my work desk. Now I can continue to use the previous Scaleo as much as I want, and use the new machine for new things. Like playing two accounts of DAoC at the same time.

I still have problems with sharing folders on the network. Even though they are marked as shared folders on the "server" machine, they don't show up anywhere on the new machine or on the Pocket PC. Yes, I now magically have Internet access on the Pocket PC too, as long as I am at home. So I can read Camelot Herald from the bathroom. (I have tried.) Not something I am likely to miss otherwise though. Opera is not out for the Pocket PC, they have prioritized mobile phones, and IE isn't very good at displaying normal web pages on a small screen. When (if?) Opera for Pocket PC comes, not even the bed will be safe from the Internet anymore. Right now I can only read the news that go into Avantgo, really. Anything else requires excessive scrolling.

Not so with the new desktop PC. Despite a truly cheap graphics card (Radeon 9200 SE) it is still pretty good. The card also makes no sound or excessive heat. I may still switch around the cards when City of Heroes comes out, unless I have to buy a new one. But for playing two accounts of Dark Age of Camelot it is quite good enough. I don't use any higher resolution than 1024x768 there anyway (or indeed for anything else). The graphics while moving are less smooth than they used to be on the other machine (with NVIDIA GeForce 3 Ti 200) but starting and zoning take less time now. I wonder if I could add a third DAoC Europe account and play with three paladins ...
Man, I just got a nosebleed.

Which reminds me, the new machine evidently has a built-in DVD+RW player/writer. I did not ask for that, since I already have an external Freecom DVD+RW burner. It also turns out, not to any great surprise, that the DVD+RW in the new machine is unable to read partially written DVDs from the Freecom. (There is a feature that lets you treat a DVD as a standard removable disk, where you can just add files until it is full. I believed that was a feature in Windows XP, but it just might be something that came with the Freecom. Or the new machine may be defective ... the old one lost all contact with its CD-ROM drive after a month or two. Right now it's no big deal, but I'm likely to experiment more with it in the future, if any.)

Why does a nosebleed remind me of a DVD burner? Because I've got literally days of fansubbed Japanese anime nicely downloaded and burned on DVD for my cultural exchange pleasure. And Japanese are the only people who think a nosebleed is kinda kinky. (Male virgins are supposed to get a nosebleed when seeing someone exciting or even imagining such things. I doubt this happens often in real life, though you never know. The power of faith should not be underestimated.)

Anyway. The machine kicks slightly more ass than its predecessor, and I now have the both of them and a wireless LAN. Greeed!