It was probably the minute puff of smoke.
It could have been the odor…
Maybe it was watching the screen compress to a tiny little blip then shut off that should have alerted me.
My computer had just died.

It’s a stiff.
Bereft of life, it rests in peace.
It had gone and joined the Choir Invisible.
If I hadn’t nailed it to the floor, it would be pushing up daisies by now.
This was an EX-computer.

Since I’m the computer guy, employed in the field, and working like mad, I couldn’t afford a new one or even much of a replacement. I was planning on upgrading and even had Santa’s approval for xmas (I was on the Very Good list) when the bugger expired.

Remember the Old Days, when you could save some money by building your own computer?
They evaporated fairly rapidly.
I just figured out how to bring them back.

My secret?
It’s not a secret - it’s newegg.com (or your favorite deep discounter)

$129 AMD X2 5000 Black cpu
$ 50 DDR800 2G ram
$ 75 MSI AM2 motherboard (cheaper boards available)
$ 20 arctic cpu cooler fan

Why that’s about $274 for a new computer!

Ok, there’s always a hitch…. this assumes that you have a case, power supply, hard drive, and CD/DVD.
Since I’m using new technology, it wants SATA drives, although you can attach two IDE drives (which won’t work as fast as SATA, of course).

This particular cpu was chosen because AMD unlocked it. This means it’s perfectly ok to overclock it. There’s a very good article on this chip at tomshardware.com, which I studied before deciding to purchase it. The long and short of it is that you’re getting a 5000 chip which can be overclocked to approximately a 6400 chip - AMD’s best. They’re selling you their top of the line chip for peanuts.

Don’t worry about what you’ve heard about overclocking and cooling. You can use just about any fan - you don’t need liquid oxygen cooling to make this thing run faster. It’s done with the multiplier (in the BIOS) so the chip doesn’t generate any significant amount of additional heat when overclocked. It was a lot of fun, however, to attach the humongous fan I purchased to my face and talk like Darth Vader for the majority of the day. It looked like a cross between a radiator, a fan, and old Darth’s helmet.

How do I like it?
I love it.
It’s one of the fastest computers around. You don’t exactly wait long when you click on something. It kinda pops up immediately.

I wasted no time in assembling it and installing Xubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy). Linux found everything and installed in minutes. I figured there would be no problems because the chip was `certified for Vista’ and if it will run Vista, it will run ANYTHING :)

If you have any decent amount of computer acuity, head right out and get yerself a pile o’ parts like the ones above and upgrade yourself into the next century. You won’t regret it. Would I lie to you?