Sunday, January 02, 2005

      I ate my black-eyed peas and my greens for good luck, but my stupid computer still crashed hard Saturday night. Sigh. At least if I have to buy a new one, they're fairly cheap right now. The nice thing is that I already have all the accessories so I don't have pay for a printer, monitor, USB hub, scanner, etc. I'm still hoping that I can keep this one going a while longer. I'm just now beginning to see some daylight in the gloom of my debts. I'd hate to have to add to it now.
      A non-computer friend doesn't understand my urgency about the computer. For her, it's just a box that she does a bit of email on. But for me, it's a major part of my life. I use it for writing, producing my monthly newsletter, for music, for my digital camera, etc. Without it, I can hardly function. I don't want to borrow trouble, though. Maybe the system reinstall will fix the crazy thing. (Does anyone out there have an AMD processor on their computer? I can find an AMD-based machine for about half what the Intel systems are, so I'm interested on how well they work. Let me know your thoughts on them.)
      In other news, there's not much. I made a few resolutions, the usual: lose weight, write more, get out of debt, etc. We'll check back with me on them in February. Tomorrow I return to work, in some ways a bit depressing because the holidays are over and I dread the piled-up work and the irate customers, but it will be nice to get back to a routine. (This feeling will only last until I'm yelled at by a customer. An important thing that I've learned: Not only is the customer NOT always right, many times they're completely crazy.)
      Speaking of resolutions, one of them is to focus more on my writing. Thus I need to close this and get to typing. Adios!

4 comments:

Michelle said...

Hey...just that inconsistent lurker of your blog here. But I thought I would give my impression of AMD Processors. They are awesome in my opinion. I have one computer (I have 2) that is an AMD. It is going on 7 years of life without service or breakdown of any kind, other than my own version of "service". It is going strong still and I would recommend it to anyone. Good luck on your new possible purchase, your health and your resolutions. :) Have a blessed new year.

Anonymous said...

Of my 4 computers, 2 use AMD processors. Neither AMD nor Intel are inherently "better", but AMD-based systems usually have a better price-to-performance ratio right now, as you've noticed. Intel Celeron processors are also cheap, and perform nicely.

You should be able to buy a computer, complete with 256 mb ram and 17 inch monitor, for right at $500. Walmart.com has one for $468, with a monitor. That's with an Intel Celeron processor running at 2.93 GHz.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=3340268&cat=3951&type=19&dept=3944&path=0%3A3944%3A3951

Baz said...

I used to have a wonderful AMD based system. Fast as anything and really reliable until one day when I turned it on and it completley fried itself (motherboard and processor that is).

The only thing that was salvageable was the video card - the memory in the system was useless because it was SDRAM and all new boards take DDRAM.

I don't think there is much difference between Intel and AMD (Cyrix were better but they went bust) its basically a lottery when you buy computer components because you never know if the tech assembling them has just had a bad day or not.

Good luck with rebuilding your system.

Anonymous said...

I have two AMDs and have had absolutely no trouble with them for the last five years. They're AMD Athlon 750 processors with 512M RAM. I still consider them more than fast enough to do everything I want or need from computing--writing, web browsing, personal website development, chat, and listening to music--simultaneously. In fact, when trying to do all that and still watch TV on my Samsung Synchmaster 170MP, I only have two problems--the screen gets crowded, and I sometimes forget to put the cursor in the right window for where I'm working.

By the way, I just tuned in to check you out from a link on Holly Lisle's blog, and you have an interesting site.

Jean