I just got a new PC. It’s a Dell Dimension 9150, dual core CPU, 2 GB of RAM, dual mirrored SATA-II disks. Awesome. But practically the biggest improvement over my old machine is a pair of 19″ 1905FP flat-panel LCD monitors. My old pair of 19″ CRTs took up so much of my desk space that the switch has given me square feet of my desk back. Nice.
One thing about LCDs, though — the nature of the pixels in the LCDs makes some of my fonts look crappy. Microsoft’s ClearType makes them smooth, but it’s a false smooth, and they just look fuzzy then. Luckily, I just found the ClearType tuning tool, so I can change it so I like it:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypePowerToy.mspx
Thanks MS. Now, if you could just ship this stuff with your OS, I’d be happier. 🙂
The justification for dual disks was really easy. I timed myself last time I rebuilt my PC and I know that it takes 6 hours for me to rebuild it completely. For $100, the second drive is totally worth it, compared to $300-$900 worth of billable time lost rebuilding the thing. Sure, I do rebuild my PCs every couple of years, but I usually only do it when I have downtime, and not in the middle of a project.
Okay, time to figure out how fast Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is… 🙂