I have been into computing for about seven years now. When I got my first computer, it was an old one from work that they gave me. It was so old and cheap and I was so unexperienced that I didn't even know what a modem was or that I had to have one to get online.
As the years past I started swapping out my own parts, always taking the time to do a little research for the best brands and the best specs. I started with Windows 98SE, then ran Windows XP up until recently.
I actually have an A+ certification in computers now, but never found any work in the field. So I have just continued to work on my own little system and I've done some work for others too for a little bit of money. I'd say overall, I've built from the ground up, about five computers.
Although it's tons of fun when I do build a system I have found it harder and harder to decide what direction to go sometimes, when it comes to operating system and hardware. So much so that as I write this I am still amazed how fast the technology changes.
And what makes it a bummer sometimes is that just when you think you have the latest and greatest system, out comes some new and more powerfull. Case in point is about a year ago, I decided to replace my motherboard and processor, I got a good deal on a x64 bit board and processor. It was my first x64.
I really didn't start thinking until recently though, that I should take advantage of the x64 speed, so for the last three months I've been experimenting with various x64 systems. The first one I tried was a corporate wersion of Windows XP Pro that my friend gave me. He works for a Microsoft-related company and gets stuff free.
Althoough I was immedietely impressed with the stability and speed of the XP x64, I quickly found out that there just weren't that many good apps available for XP x64, so I abandoned those plans. Then some friends of mine recomended trying Vista x64. They said there was more drivers and applications available now and that I should'nt have any problems.
This made sense to me, although I was leery because I tried Vista Home Premium x32 and did not like the slowness. I mean I did everything I could to speed things up on that setup and still it was slow. So I proceeded slowly with Vista x64. Actually I had tried Home Premium x64 first. A friend of mine loaned me a disk to try. Although I found it faster than the x32 bit Home Premium, I though it still tended to lag a bit.
Finally I tried Home Basic x64 and to my surpise was greatly impressed with it's speed over Home Basic x32. And I usualy turn off the Aero interface anyway to save resources, so that was no big deal with having the basic version. So that's what I am sticking with now and will be putting it into a new MSI x64 Socket 754 Motherboard. I am also running the x64 Athlon XP 3200 processor, 2 GB's of Kingston RAM (The most it will take), a 256 MB NVidia AGP graphics card and a Creative Audigy sound card.
ALthough it may sound like I am finally settled on something now, it wasn't an easy process to get to. First of all, while I was shopping for parts for the new board, I found that, first of all, Socket 754 motherboards are becoming rare, as is AGP slots. And RAM has changed so much too. Like I mentioned earlier, I thought it was the greatest thing in the world when I bought my two 1 GB sticks of DDR400 a couple of years ago. But during my recent shopping spree, I was amazed to find out how the speed has increased. But of course my now outdated Socket 754, even though it's x64, wion't take any of that.
So I think I'm feeling a little "behind the times" these days. I stilll read a couple of computer magazines and marvel at the things I see available in there and I talk with techs alot too. And that's what leads me to some questions I have. The last tech I talked to, when I was having trouble making up my mind about x64, told me that the way of the future is dual and multi-cores. Do you concur with that? Do you still think there will be a place for x64 for awhile?
By the way, the only reason I am doing x64 is that I pride myself in doing some things different while still being ground enough in reality to just "get something that works". As far as software goes, the next go around I might try Linux, although I don't know that much about it. Is it easy to pickup on and do you think that's the future? I understand they even have x64 versions of that. And what about Windows 7. Do you think that will be anything to hope for?
Like I said, I am just trying to get a game plan here for the coming years. I am very much of a perfectionist about perfomance and , at the same time, can get as frustrated as anybody when things don't turn out as they plan. Case in point...Vista. I mean if in a couple of weeks when I fiinally have all of my programs loaded on my new system and I just not happy with things for one reason or another, I could very easily just go right back to XP x32 bit!.
But then that starts the whole process over again and I end up writing you guys another letter like this!
