If follows that 8 is worthless without a touch screen. That’s probably why you can toggle the classic interface.

Every time I build a new machine, I have to learn a whole new set of technologies. I inherited the 64 bit machine I use now, but have added and replaced a few parts with items of my own (and better) choice.

Never skimp on power supply. It pays to overdesign wattage. The machine won’t use more power than it needs, so why not have a bit of overkill just in case?

So far most of the power-requiring graphics cards I use feed off the standard main power supply plugs, same as hard drives and other components.

I don’t have advice on CPUs, since the last time I looked at them was over two years ago. My standing advice is to find the bleeding cutting edge of the technology, and then take one step back. This way you get hot performance and not so many “new product bugs.”

It’s like my policy of never installing 1.0 of anything.

Solid state hard drives are at the cost point that gigabyte disk drives were a few years ago. How durable is the data? Excellent question. Do they have answers yet when the tech is this new? I can see them as a big plus for laptops.

Cases are still cheap but they no longer come with power supplies. Hidden inflation I suppose.

750w pwr supplies are not uncommon. 250w was the standard when I was into it. Not sure which components these days are using that much . Probably the video cards and CPU’s. I hope to find a guide that tells you how to add up your system’s requirements.

Video cards us a PCI”e” (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express
) slot nowadays. No more AGP. The cards use one or two dedicated power supplies. They aren’t just powered by the MOBO.

Kind of a kick getting back into the acronyms. I actually remember some.

Ram is still DDR but now is two and three channel. Maybe it was always 2 but I think the last time I contemplated adding more, 4 GB was the limit. I think it’s 8 now but that’s probably off by a factor of 2.

Drives. No more IDE (“integrated drive electronics” – remembered that one, woo hoo!) it’s all serial ATA- SATA. Different cabling . No more “Molex” pwr connectors. But what takes their place is new cabling and modular pwr connections. You only plug in the cables you need so you don’t have a bunch of extra hanging from the main pws.

Central Processing Unit’s? Don’t ask me. They’re going to take some research just like MOBO’s, busses and chipsets. Only have a vague idea what a “Core” is.

In the NewEgg video they use one solid state hard drive for the OS and a mechanical drive your data. Sounds like a great idea separating the two but it also begs the question of which is more reliable these days.

Fun Stuff…

Good thinking.

I abhor Vista and dislike the way files are displayed on Windows 7. Change for the sake of change is never good. So I stick with Windows XP for most online tasks. I’ll give Windows 8 a shot just for the hell of it, but, to be honest, today’s programmers just don’t have the same inspiration or soul that they did in the late nineties.

That’s also why cars, today, look like spit and the only decent designs are rehashes from the sixties. The build quality of today’s merchandise is deplorable. It has now become an art form to know which old products, and from which past decade, to purchase NOS or used for a better quality of life.

I’ve found over the years that it pays to buy full versions of operating systems. I’ve had to reinstall often enough that it’s worth the money.

Used to be that to reinstall an application upgrade I’d have to install the original version first. In recent years, upgrades of applications are happy just to take a quick look at the original installation CD.

My laptop and “spare” desktop run XP, and work just fine for what they’re used for. No Vista there either, thanks.

There was no upgrade path from XP to Win7. You had to either do a clean install or buy Vista, which did have a direct Win7 upgrade path. That sucked.

To the best of my knowledge, you can update to Windows 8 from 7, Vista, or XP. Apparently an upgrade version is only like 40 bucks until sometime in January.

Vista had issues with the video card, DVD reader and CD burner. And I don’t remember why but the cool Aero Glass feature wouldn’t work either. So I wiped it and re-installed XP.

Windows 7 has come and gone.

If you look at the min reqs for 8, they’re ridiculously low but there is no way I’d try it unless ALL my hardware devices are on the compatibility list- highly unlikely but I haven’t looked it up.

After the vista debacle, it makes sense to me to either update your hardware, or start from scratch.

You’re left with one choice: Which would be the most fun