Shiny new 'puter

[matgb]

I'll be updating the bio once it's all set up, but thanks to a friend's son upgrading his PC, I have a shiny new box sat under my desk at home. It's so new, it doesn't have a dial up modem as standard, so I need to go buy one. 2.6Ghz and lots of RAM. This may even lead me to investigate the use of some of those 'messenger' things people keep going on about. Don't hold your breath on that one though.

Stopped myself playing with it last night to get some sleep, but once I've got a modem for it I'll be fine. Windoze XP tho, the Ubuntu disks still haven't arrived, but at least XP auto partitions on first start up.

Anyone any advice for someone who has never owned a brand new PC, ever?

Comments

advice

[freddiefraggles.livejournal.com]

ask it nicely to do stuff, else it won't like you and refuse to do things later

[js84.livejournal.com]

Congrats Mat!

I think from your previous machine you know not to overload the system too much with programs running at once or things stored on the hard drive. The same thing still applies with one that is miles ahead. If you intend to use Ubuntu more than Windows that should be less of an issue (but I could never get Debian or Fedora to work over dialup. Now that I've changed my mouse, the cursor doesn't work now :/ )

Raks is considering building a computer himself with his brother's help as his laptop's getting on a bit, he might fill you in on this :)

[silentgreeneyes.livejournal.com]

hehe yay new compy :)

As for not overloading it...
Considering the processor size and lots of ram, you can run a certain ammount of things at once. mine's just over 1.5 GHz and I can run a fair ammount at once (then again it an AMD and puts out the same ammount of heat as a small nuclear power plant...)

Anyway Yes! Get a messenger! or something..

[mapp.livejournal.com]

Make sure you've got all the drivers for your hardware and, if you're missing any, go forth and download them, then stick them on a CD. It'll make your life a lot easier should you want to format your hard drive and start again.

If you're going to install another OS on the computer, you're probably going to end up wanting to wipe the computer clean anyways..

[paulatpingu.livejournal.com]

Cool, good for you.

Firewall, Anti-virus, Anti-spyware.

Games, games, games, games, games, games, games.

The other advice is far more useful than mine. It's pretty obvious anyway, I guess.

[matgb]

Modem bought, and am online. XP comes with a free firewall installed, I'll probably stick to that, and I stopped running virs protection awhileback on the grounds I never open attachments. Run a scan once a week and I'm fine. Perhaps something to do with no microsoft products used to go online?

Anyway, this comment was mostly brought to you by the 'it's easiest to log in by commenting' laziness that is Mat.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mindrape_/]

No matter how hard you try you will never go online without some microsoft product interfering or interacting with the connection.

Sorry to put a downer on things. :)