That could go in the Torture your fellow dopers…but in this case not.
I just ordered my new computer today and I want it now, not later! All custom built fer me!
It’s hard to wait for my new toy, 'specially being the geek I am but I will have to bide my time dreaming of it rather than playing with it.
I didn’t go top o’ the line with components, aka latest and greatest but compared to what I have now (I equate this system to a Pacer) the new system is a power horse SUV < grin >.
Like I said, it’s not top o’ the line, but hey I dig it (sides I still need a printer, digital camara, another monitor and scanner)
Here’s the basics:
Abit BE6 Mother Board
600 MHZ Pent III
128 MB RAM
mid tower with 300 watt PS
20 GIG Ultra ATA 66 7200 RPM HD
32 MB video card (forget the brand)
Ensoniq 128 sound card
basic fax modem – not a 3COM
40x CD ROM (gonna wait on the CDRW)
100 MB Zip drive
(have full version of Back Office gonna load it to keep my NT skills up to par)
That’s about it, but if you compare it to my current system (as a tech chick and a web designer) this system kicks some serious butt!
I am going to keep this puppy around though, I like it and it will help me to test web pages on the web after I have completed them. I plan on down grading both IE and Netscape for this particular reason 
You call yourself a tech and you bought a system? For shame! I just can’t trust a machine that someone else assembled. It’s like a car… stock cars are for shlubs like me who don’t know anything about em. Custom cars are for wannabes who can’t do it themselves. Real pros build their own damn engine, or whatever it is that people that know about cars do for fun.
Er, anyways… the only machine I’ve ever store bought has been ripped apart and put back together more times than I can count (more than 2), and the other two machines I did everything but put the chips on the pc board. I know every inch of those machines, and I know that anything that goes wrong with them was my fault, not some minimum wage kid in the backroom of the store.
http://www.madpoet.com
Clerks - Just because they serve you doesn’t mean they like you.
Just looking at those stats for a “not top o’ the line” computer makes me laugh. I remember the first generation IBM PC’s (circa 1981) and the comparison is remarkable. (This is not comparing other things like Apples or Comodores that I used, but an IBM PC is a pretty direct apples to apples comparison (not the computer, the fruit).
Now this is from memory, so I may be wrong on these stats, but this is what I recall using:
6 MHz 8088 processor (in a major advance, later ones went up to 8MHz)
128 KB RAM (I think you could upgrade to 384KB, and there was that 640 KB DOS limit)
Two 160 KB single-sided 5.25" floppy disk drives
(later the disks went double-sided, and there was an upgrade so you could you could put 360 KB on a floppy)
No hard drive (the first ones with hard drives were 10 MB --That’s Megs not Gigs)
Monochrome monitor.
One little dinky speaker that would buzz.
No modem, but I think that’s about when you could first get a 1200 baud modem, up from 300 (external only).
Enjoy Techchick (and thank Moore’s law for what you’ve got).
Yo MadPoet,
I don’t have the time or the patience to build my own system right now, I have a lot on my plate. I would have purchased the same parts and built it myself…this isn’t a Dell or a Gateway, this is a company I have dealt with for several years
'Sides, my current system was built by them and they don’t void my warranty when I mess around in it.