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The Twilight Zone. Well, let’s hope not, I am about to try out Windows 7 Beta 1, 64 bit edition, on a machine I can do without for awhile. It is an eMachines T2850 case, which has had all the guts removed (the way I obtained it) and refilled with a 500 watt PSU, a PCPartner motherboard with Radeon R300 graphics, and 2GB of PC3200 memory by SuperTalent. It is powered by an AMD Athlon 64 3000 (yes, a single core processor) and will have an EIDE 80 GB Western Digital Caviar hard drive.  It has a 16x eMachine DVD-ROM and a 20x CD-RW, also for eMachines.

It runs really well on these parts with Windows XP Pro with Service Package 2, and because I am simply changing out the hard drive. I will be able to switch back and forth within 10 minutes to make comparisons.

Should the onboard Radeon graphics not cut the mustard – for Aero, nothing to do with gaming – I will install an nVidia 8600GTS OC from eVGA, to get the job done. This will be used over the next few weeks, and if it looks good, I’ll also install on the Quadzilla I have recently built, whcih is considerably faster. I am starting with the older machine to see if any of the Microsoft propaganda can be believed.

If you review the specs above, and compare to what is given for Win 7, you’ll see that the machine fits comfortably above the minimum specs given.

Wish me luck, and stay tuned!

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I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick, not wounded, dead.Woody Allen