My main computer appears to be dying (I've been unable to boot it reliably since last Saturday), so I haven't been looking at PDML, etc., for a few days (I read PDML via my Unix shell account at panix, and I didn't have a secure SSH client set up on any of the other machines until I found the time to track down a licence code and install the one I like on my little travelling system).
I'll be limited to this machine for around another week, until the replacement system gets here. It's been a while since I looked at computer systems, and I was somewhat surprised to discover that for what is now apparently referred to as a "gaming" machine there was no significant saving to be made by buying a tower system instead of a laptop (which, of course, already comes with a display). I still need it to be a Windows machine (I do occasionally still have to do some c++ bugfixing, but at least that meant I was able to get a contribution to the cost from my occasional employer). So in another week I should be taking delivery of a system that I hope will meet my needs for the next five years. While the CPU isn't all that much of a step up from the older system - both are quad i7 configurations, so improvements are less noticeable there, everything else should be a big step forward. The most noticeable change is that you can now get 4K displays on a laptop! While my older machine was 1920 x 1200 (I do like that last 10% of height) there aren't many 16:10 systems around, so I'll have to hope that the extra resolution means I can work with slightly smaller text (measured in physical screen size). I've also got four times as much memory, and 4.5 times as much disk space (of which that last 0.5x is an SSD, so I should see a big performance gain there!) Now I'm just working out what extra cables I need :-( One year ago both my wife's machine and my one were still using VGA cables to hook each up to external monitors to provide a second display. When we decided to replace my wife's machine her new system only had an HDMI connector, but fortunately the monitor we were using for that machine also had a DVI-D input (as well as the VGA input, which it called D-Sub), so an HDMI-to-DVI-D cable solves that. The machine I'm using at the moment only has a mini display port, (which is, I believe, the same as Thunderbolt 2) but fortunately my external monitor (also 1920 x 1200) has a display port input (as well as both VGA and DVI-D), so a simple mini_dp to display port cable should take care of that. I'll also be able to use the same cable on my new machine (which provides both HDMI and mini_dp outputs), but I'll probably get myself another HDMI to DVI-D cable and leave the display port connector available for when I yield to temptation and put a 4K monitor on my desk. I believe that the nVidia graphics configuration in my new machine will be able to drive all three displays - that's a lot of pixels! connector (which is, I believe, a Thunderbolt 2 -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
