At 02:40 PM 2/11/06 -0500, David W. Fenton wrote: >Nor would I build one for myself.
David's points are all very well made, and I agree save for the one above. Because I have specific needs that are not addressed by any computer manufacturer, I build my own (not the laptop!). Except for a very few people (three others, actually), I would never build a machine for anyone else -- and certainly never ever sell one! There is no way I could provide a comparable machine at a competitive price, as David says. My home-built machines cost more. I buy motherboards and processors I can overclock, good video cards, sound cards I'm actually going to use, the number and brand of drives I want, the number and kind of ports, the networking, etc. I know them well; they don't usually fail. (I've had a few failures: hard drives, a power supply burn-up, a motherboard with that generation of exploding capacitors.) Knowing the hardware, I can keep the operating system happy. I remember Johannes (I think it was Johannes) who sniffed that I was still using that unstable Windows 98 on my main production machine. (I still am, by the way.) But I keep it clean and more stable than some XP installations I've seen. But don't build one unless you have to! Dennis PS: You might be amused by the configuration of this computer (built in 2001, overclocked to 1.4GHz and working flawlessly): 2 Sony 21-inch monitors (picked up from Vermont state surplus for $50 each when they were going to LCD screens) connected to a Matrox video card; 2 Waveterminal 24/96 sound cards; Cisco wireless networking; Logitech wireless keyboard; Logitech trackball; Intuos mouse and pen with USB 10x12 tablet; 2 CD/DVD drives (Sony and LG); 2 hard drives (Maxtor 80GB and 160GB) with ATA133 card; extra drive caddy for removable hard drives (where I archive projects); lonely old diskette drive; Nikon USB slide scanner; Xerox parallel laser printer; Epson USB inkjet printer; trusty Palm V hooked to the serial port; X-Drive USB 60GB hard drive with 3 slots for removable memory cards; Firewire Canon DV camera; Red Rover USB audio control box (for Adobe Audition); Yamaha USB Midi interface. And of course the sound cards have inputs, including a Mackie mixer and a Stanton digital turntable, and the Midi box controls some old Proteus stuff. -- Please participate in my latest project: http://maltedmedia.com/people/bathory/365-2007.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
