I’ve made a little error in judgement.

Ya see, I’ve got a brand new shiny-shiny and it’s, well, extremely shiny. It’s a laptop. The same one I tried buying last year only newer, better specs, direct from Dell and shinier. But… there’s a little problem. A tiny problem. A problemito if you will. And that’s quite aside from the fact that it comes with Internet Explorer 6 installed as default (with Windows XP Pro SP2 - Vista be damned!)

The miniscule issue I have - and I confess that I’m entirely to blame for my propensity for magpie-like attraction to the shinies, is that the laptop, with its 2.6Ghz Dual Core CPU, 4Gb RAM, 400Gb HDD, Dual 256Mb SLI Geforce 8700M GT Graphics adaptor, remote controlled media player, 17″ widescreen and backlit keyboard, is too big to fit in my motorcycle panniers. Also the power supply is the size of a brick. Well, half a brick but seriously, it’s brick sized. Red brick not breezeblock because that would be silly. It’s HUGE (and that’s before you add in usual male exaggeration). I suppose it’s not actually a surprise when you consider it’s a desktop replacement rather than a tiny portable. Ah well - it’s a problem I can deal with.

Did I mention how shiny it was?

(P.S. When I get my broadband connected in the flat next week, there will be no stopping my plans for world domination. You have been forewarned. And forewarned, as they say, is given enough notice to make the appropriate plans.)

Something I do want to do this year is upgrade my PC which is something I get around to doing every couple of years or so. This year I won’t necessarily be relegating my old PC parts to the loft as I think I’m going to finally need to set up a dedicated server for work. (I tried doing this before but never really needed to but now that I’m working for myself and considering I’ve spent the last couple of months working from home with both server software and client software running on the same machine, it’s more of a consideration.)

Of course, the big event this year has been the release of MS Vista and however else I look at it, I know that I’m going to be upgrading to it at some point. That point is probably later rather than sooner (i.e. whenever SP1 comes out). Not being a techie, I couldn’t really give a stuff about Linux or Ubuntu (?) or whatever and as a gamer I’m not going to Mac. Actually, as a professional non-techie techie type I’m more or less limited to staying on Windows as that’s the technology I spend most of the time working with. But my current rig isn’t going to support Vista. More importantly, it isn’t going to support games running with the new CryEngine technology. (Is this important? Take a look at this technology vid (video launcher in little box on right of article) and tell me it isn’t!) Hell, I can’t even run LOTRO on anything other than the lowest settings at the moment so an upgrade is definitely on the cards.

Building a new PC has got to start from a central point and that point for me is likely to be graphics card. What ever else, I’m going to need a DX10 capable graphics processor (possibly 2) and this is likely to need a PCI-Express slot so a new motherboard is also needed. Next is choice of CPU. Well, it would be foolish to go for anything less than dual core these days and quad core will probably be the best choice but they’re extortionately expensive at the moment.

Fortunately, this is all just dreaming and speculation. For a start, there aren’t many DX10 video cards around at the moment although there are bound to be more in a couple of months time. With luck the price of a quad-core CPU will have dropped too (although obviously there will still be a premium price to pay for a high-end one) and I’ll probably have to round it all off with the purchase of a couple of 250Gb HDDs to give me, what, half a terabyte of storage I think? The sad thing is that a 250Gb drive is only about 60-70 quid these days. RAM is also going to be necessary - will have to double what I’ve got to 2Gb. From what I’ve read, there’s a pecularity with Vista (one of many) that means that any more than 2Gb is next to useless as it doesn’t make the best of it or something but I’ll have to investigate more.

I know that whatever happens (and given recent v. expensive purchases) this PC won’t be in my possession for sometime. But I have to write about it as I keep finding myself looking at all the component shops and doing price comparisons on Kelkoo. It’s a dangerous habit I tell you. Dangerous and expensive. I should stick to diving!