Well, the old desktop I used for internet stuff has been getting worse and worse. Recently the drive started making grinding noises. Never a good sign.

So it was time to take Old Graphite out behind the barn. . . I don't really want to donate a computer with a funky drive. If anyone wants the old machine minus the drive, it's perfectly useable XP workhorse and has a decent NVidia card (two DVI outs). Just buy a new drive and you're in business. I'd give the interior a good air-blasting though. The heat sink has a thick coating of grime.

So I replaced it with a clearance Acer that had a Western Digital 500 gig drive, 5600 dual Athalons and 3 gig of RAM (and boy does Vista like the RAM). Chats was getting sick of me shopping desktops all through the fall anyway (I was waiting for the after Xmas pricedrops) so now I can obsess on something else. I wanted to put in a decent video card so I had to swap out the power supply so I could feed the card. This is the first time I've done that serious a mod and it took me much of yesterday. My lowest Vista benchmark is 5.0, but that'll go up as soon as I pick up another gig of RAM.

I'm still going back and forth about putting in a sound card. I've got a working Creative one in the old machine, but I like the interface on the built in one with the new box.

Anyway, Vista's working great so far. I like the gadgets off to the right. I've got a the calendar, analog clock, stickies, and a slideshow that plays my collection of classic pulp and paperback covers.