New toy alert

Sooner or later, there's going to be a new pooter appearing in Sleepy's house.

The pooter gear I have now is perfectly functional ... it's just getting a little old. Old in PC terms more than a couple of years old, depending on what kind of spec you went for in the first place. It also depends on what you use the PC for.

A good innovation over the past year or so is the netbook, a pooter for the palm of the hand. I don't have one of these but I've used them. They've hit Mass Market level now, which translates to "Cheap", "Good", "Reliable". I use a laptop instead of desktop for forums & general stuff now. You can pack them up and take them with you, whether that's to your parents' place or just as far as the sofa. Any laptop will do the average user until it breaks, spec is irrelevant as the applications aren't particularly demanding.

But you can't really game on them ... You can ... but it's a bit nasty on the keyboard & trackpad plus they rarely have the graphical grunt demanded by today's photorealistic games.

So - laptop/netbook for general internet type use (I also have my music library on laptop)
Desktop for games & performance PC stuff

But - the desktop I have is a good few years old now and is starting to struggle with those photorealistic games. My (old!) monitor is older and is :
1 - 4:3 instead of widescreen
2 - possibly starting to burn out*
3 - at 17", not that big#
*(this is quite possibly me making up an excuse to Spend Money)
#(17" is Definitely not small)

And you can probably tell already that I'm making up excuses for spending some cash. It's a Samsung 23" LED backlit monitor by the way and is so big, I have to turn my head to see what's happening on the right hand side if my attention was on the left. I was going to go touchscreen but I've pitched instead for high quality of display.

Touchscreen - niiiiice but possibly gimmicky plus high Finger Mark Potential
High quality picture - this is what we get a screen for right ?

The rest of the machine will come later. I'm not quite ready to buy yet and will wait anyway until I have a period of time off work so I'm home to pick up the bits when they're delivered. (Or I head down the motorway to Novatech to pick them up). The tech isn't quite ready yet either, with a defect scare on the motherboard series I'd have gone for, plus there's rumours of something better coming "soon".

Note - there are Always rumours of something better coming "soon" in the techie world. The trick is knowing the following :

Buy only when you need to
Buy only what you need

However, one of the things I prefer about buying my own kit compared to the rules we follow at work is : I am perfectly happy to creep requirements. If two items that do the job cost £100 or £110, sometimes that extra £10 cost means £50 extra value. The advantage there is that I can buy something that meets my needs now and in a couple of years time. However that's also from being able to bend "Buy only what you need", as what we need changes over time.

By the requirement definition : "Must facilitate raiding in World of Warcraft with frame rates above 15" (15 = bare minimum), my current machine would still be ok. However, that's with graphics that aren't as Shiny as they could be.

Shiny is good. Chase the Shiny.
(if you can afford it!)

I'm chasing other shinies as well at the moment. I've been remembering back to the many years of good service I had from a Puma which was 2 years old when I bought it. I had that one for most of its best years, before it started disintegrating ... Conversely, the Focus was 6 years old when I got it and I have a big feeling that it's about to hit its decline.

The answer - use that big disposable income that comes from being single and buy something new. Still making my mind up there, although it's a bit like me talking myself into the new monitor.

Question - why am I blogging when I have a Big New Toy to play with ?????

Cya !

PS I'd trade that disposable income in a heartbeat for someone to share it with.