MemeMachineGo!

I've spent a lot of time in the past few days building and configuring my new computer. This is the first one I built from scratch. It wasn't so bad, but it also impressed on me how much computers still haven't made consumer appliance status: how anyone who isn't a computer professional installs new hardware I don't know.

It was significantly cheaper than my last computer, bought 4 years ago, and, naturally, incredibly more powerful. 4 times as much memory. A better processor running 3 times as fast. 15 times more hard drive space. A DVD-ROM instead of CD-ROM. Considering how to move my old files over, it occurred to me to just physically move the old drive. Ta da. I have the best of intentions to sort through all of the old files and organize them onto the new drive, then reformat the old one and see if I can find anyone I can even give an 8G drive to. Of course, now that it's there, I have access to the files, and the box is sealed, well, I wouldn't hold my breath as to when that'll happen.

More best intentions: build a Linux box from the old machine. But besides having no hard drive, I took out its power supply too. Its fan has been crying its death screams for months. It now lies stripped, hollow and dark, after all its years of faithful service. How ignominious.

I'm running Windows 2000. Why? you ask, shocked, shocked. To the why are you running an Evil Empire OS and not Linux or maybe BSD like a right-thinking individual? part, because I want to do voice recognition and audio editing and the Unices aren't up to snuff there yet. And there are advantages to using the platform that everyone supports. To the why a revision out of date? part, because the first year and a half or so of any Microsoft release is a public beta. I downloaded the recent Service Package 3 for Win2K, taking advantage of the pain and suffering of all the Windows users before me, instead of participating in the pain and suffering of all the bugs and security holes XP users will continue to endure. And I could buy it used on the cheap and at least not directly benefit Microsoft. One drawback to 2K, though: there's no Annoyances book for it, and there won't be.

Both my video card and sound card's installers arrogantly set up my system to automatically on startup run controllers taking up screen real estate. Additionally, the sound card had another program that sprung up whenever you put the cursor near the upper right, something I do all the time to minimize windows I'd maximized. It took a few minutes of annoyance to disable these. I hate arrogant software. Almost as much as I hate software that knows better than you do.

Besides EAC, which I already mentioned, I've downloaded Mozilla (browser), Zone Alarm (firewall), AntiVir (antivirus), Proxomitron (web proxy), WinAmp (multimedia player), Monkey's Audio (lossless audio compressor), LAME (MP3 encoder), Acrobat Reader, Xemacs (programmer's editor, cult), CygWin (UNIX environment), NetHack (game, controlled substance), ActiveState Perl (programming language, way of life), ShareAza (gnutella P2P file sharing client), TeraTerm Pro (terminal emulator) and TTSSH (ssh extension for TeraTerm). Total cost of all of the above: nada.

Why am I detailing all this? To ask you, my collective readership, for advice: what else might I like? With the exception of Emacs over any other editor and Perl over any other language, I'm not particularly attached to any of the above — are there better Win2K applications for them?

Back in December Cory mentioned a reasonably priced duplex printer, the Panasonic KX-P7100. Having been lusting after it since, and my venerable HP LaserJet II giving up the ghost again, and having already spent what added up to a couple hundred dollars repairing it in recent years, I finally got a Panasonic KX-P7105 — twice the vertical resolution, and its memory is expandable.

It actually prints each sheet, spits it almost all the way out, then sucks it back in to print the other side. I'd wondered how duplex could be this cheap...

Anyway, so far, so good. I'm a happy geek.