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I'm finally building Jennie's new computer... lacking a name thus far, as the personality of the machine isn't apparent yet. My inclination is to name it something conveying my slight unease at switching to Intel for the processor, but.... we shall see. This far, the stats are:

Pentium D (dual core) 820 processor
Pentium D945PSN motherboard (dual channel, pci-e, onboard lan, onboard sound)
Corsair dual channel DDR2 5300 memory (1gb)
430 Watt Thermaltake power supply
Coolermaster CAC-T05-UB case
160gb Western Digital SATA hard drive

I also plan on adding (as soon as my employee benefits order form comes up) an ATI X700 video card... pci-e, of course. Future upgrades shall probably include a dual layer DVD burner (I'm waiting on a sale), and possibly extended hard drive capacity just because one can never have enough. I'm also considering adding some lighting to the case for the front panel, and... if need be.... a few extra fans for cooling.

Yes, I know that this machine isn't the OMG uber machine of the century... but it <i>is</i> a respectable machine that should handle most anything Jennie does for a few years... and that's the goal. I don't need a Ferrari to walk to work, and Jennie doesn't need a $4000 machine to do her work.

For those interested, incidentally, the retail price of this machine would be around $1245. I'm building it for $605 or so... a bit more if I add some cabling and lights, which I'll probably do.

Happy Birthday, Jennie!

Now.... any geek happening across this is likely to ask me why I'm going with Intel / ATI instead of with AMD / Nvidia. Geeks, my reasoning is simple. See, Intel and ATI offer me significant discounts on thier products (can you say 50% / 60% respectively), so they get my business. I love AMD and Nvidia to death, but as long as I'm selling thier products without incentives, they're not going to get my retail loyalty. Superior treatment of retailers = ATI / Intel win.

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Speaking of free things.... my recent acquisitions as far as retail stuff goes are: Norton Antivirus 2006 ($60), Norton Internet Security 2006 ($90), and a Hawking Broadband Booster ($70). I'm saving my HP and my Microsoft points for potential upgrades. (Which reminds me for some reason.... I now need a wireless card for one of my computers! Doh.) Anyway... I'm working on getting some new free stuff, and I'm considering a wireless printer.

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So now, I'll have a working machine that will be serving no useful purpose. Perhaps its time for a Linux practice box! Either that, or a hardware firewall.

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Random note from Jennie: Mineral oil can fix some damaged PS1 disks.