It's a fast machine

The last time I bought a new computer it was the beginning of February, 2002. I was in the final stages of college, and used student loan money to buy it. For the past five years that machine has faithfully chugged along, providing me a place to write research papers, crunch numbers in statistical software, and playing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault on many occasions. But as time wore on, as most computers are wont to do, it began running more slowly as I loaded more software onto it and more crap found its way into the registry.

My plan was to go shopping for a new machine come June. And as the saying goes about the best laid plans, my plans went awry this past weekend as my wife and I went out and got a new computer for home. I must say this friggin' thing rocks! It's really nice to have a computer that takes less than 5 minutes to boot, and will respond immediately when I click on something. Sure, it's a bitch reinstalling all the software I need to use, not to mention trying to move email inboxes from the old machine to the new. Running a close second in the bitch competition was backing up and copying all the data from the old machine that I wanted on the new one--20+ CD-Rs were involved with that endeavour, 10 alone on just my music files.

I think what I like best about the new computer is the 22 inch widescreen display that came with it. This mofo is HUGE and the image quality is perhaps the best of any monitor I've ever owned or worked with. The computer is set up to run as a media center, complete with an array of video inputs and outputs, so I'm eager to throw a DVD in the drive and see how it looks on the monitor.

Only minor gripe I have is the Vista OS. Just because you make it look like an Mac OS doesn't mean it's as easy to use or as stable as an Mac OS. C'est la vie. Back to installing software.