More or less every two years, I am overcome by uncontrollable lust.
Lust for some fresh computing hardware, that is. YEAH!
1.5 years ago it was the HP NC8430 laptop, 2 years before that my beloved HP NC6000, and slightly short of two years before that the infinitely heavy stoeptegel-1 (I still think there’s a mini-blackhole in there somewhere).
It’s almost that time again, so I have begun shopping around (in WAB time, of course) for an affordable yet absurdly fast desktop for use at home, in my secret laboratory. Oh wait, there’s no secret laboratory. Really.
I was planning to get something with the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (4 cores at 2.4 GHz, 2 x MB L2 cache, 1066 MHz quad-clocked FSB), but Jorik fortunately recommended (thanks!) waiting for the soon-to-be-available Penryn 45nm quad cores. Seems Intel has announced the definite release of 16 new 45nm CPUs at the CES, including the similarly price-ranged but far more desirable Quad Q9450 (4 cores at 2.66 GHz, 2 x 6MB L2 cache, 1333 MHz quad-clocked FSB).
Throw 4 GB of DDR2 RAM, a Hitachi P7K500 half terabyte hard drive, a passively cooled GeForce 8600 GT 512MB and some 64-bit Ubuntu goodness at it, and you have some serious workstation action that doesn’t even leave you half-destitute!