Ordered My 5660

Congrats on buying the 5660, I know you will just love it. How do I know this? Well I got mine about a week ago with nearly identicle config and I'm still in love . Sure This machine may not be the latest and greatest but it's a solid computer. It blew away all my expectations and I plan on keeping it for years to come .

As for selling it to fund the 8887, it will hard to part with but I say do it .

Great system :-) And hey, it is pretty close to the latest and greatest... You will love it! The price was jacked up cuz of XP though... I have a copy that I'll use when I get one, which helps take the price down significantly... I LOVE THIS OPTION, lol.

That's the really cool thing about PCTorque (or any small computer reseller for that matter). I'm not forced into paying $200 more for an OS I can get for $5 from school. Microsoft is slowly pricing thenselves out of the market, and soon enough linux will be king!

you want to get me your os for $5 from school? ;-)

Sure! show me your U. of Texas student ID!

Only one per student/faculty/staff.

Yeah, the preconfigured models are cheaper because they can be made in bulk and require less custom work :-) Always make sure to try and match up with a preconfig model first and modify the things you can in them. I love the options in preconfig... they're literally perfect :-)

I was just wondering why I'm seeing people go for the 40G instead of the 60? Especially if you were saying "need whats closest to the best". Just wondering if you were going to get an external, because my 30G is almost full in my desktop and thats with just a few games on it.

Just wonderin, but congrats on getting a great lappy

....

Microsoft is slowly pricing thenselves out of the market, and soon enough linux will be king!
gsferrari


were all happy for you!

If I was going to get the 5660, I'd get the 60 gig drive... with the 8886/7, I'll get two 40 gig drives. I prefer to have two separate drives.

As far as the internal burner, 24x write speed is great! Lol, I've got an 8x burner in my current lappy... now THAT is slow. Yeah, 24x isn't 48x, lol, but it's pretty darn fast :-) I'd never get an external drive with an internal burner that is that fast... and I burn a LOT of cds, lol.

Linux Sucks

That's right, flame on...

[Initializing Rant Engine]

One of the Computer Labs in my computer science department's building has about 50 or so Dual Xeon machines with Red Hat Linux. Suffice to say, it sucks like there is no tomorrow.

[Exec Rant]

I'll give you only a couple of the issues I found with it:

1) The OS's so-called "stability" is actually... not. Now, I know that previous Windows (e.g. 95, 98, ME) have sucked in this respect too, but with Windows XP this is no longer a problem. Instead, after opening large text files in Linux, the system froze solid. Not even the mouse would move. I tried it a lot of times, with different files, different computers, etc. It kept freezing. Also, the files weren't even that big. Maybe 1 or 2 Megs. Programs on Windows XP -do- crash, but the OS itself has not once crashed with me. And I've used it since the Release Candidates.

2) Programming in Linux is actually infinitely times worse. How many here have used Visual Studio .NET? Now, how many –don’t- think that this is, in fact, the ultimate evolution of programming taken to the highest level? That’s right, no one. VS .NET is simply beautiful, it is divine. It practically does all the programming for you. OK, but let’s say VS .NET didn’t exist. Let’s say all you wanted was a fairly good, visual, fast development environment. Maybe like VS 6. That’s not quite what you get with Linux. In Linux, you get “gcc.” It is pathetic. It is the crappiest piece of junk I have ever seen. It essentially does nothing other than compile working code, or fail. And to debug? Well, there’s “gdb.” This is pathetic too. Why do I have to go through hundreds of cryptic incomprehensible commands just to be able to track a variable? Why is this so archaic and annoying?!

3) Games. How many of the newer games make it to Linux? Not many. You know what kind of games make it to Linux? Tetris, Pong, etc. Granted, simple games can be fun, but seriously, who doesn’t want the latest and greatest? Or even the decently recent games? No one. People want the coolest technologies. DX9, WM9, etc. With these things picking up fast, I don’t see how Linux will be getting gamers for a long time. Even John Carmack, the venerable supporter of OpenGL, and maker of the Quakes, which are one of the few that run on Linux, said that DX’s shader architecture is actually much better.

4) Drivers. The following is a list of the things and devices that work with Linux currently: Mouse. Keyboard. CPU. If you’ve got anything else mildly more sophisticated, well, good luck to you. Why? Cause it won’t work. And if it –does- work, then it barely performs its basic functionality.

5) Applications. What can you do in Linux? Well, you can run some back-end back-office server products. That’s pretty much it. No, seriously, there are actually other things you can do, BUT, they all suck as well. What is the problem with applications for Linux? That there are too many… WHAT? Yes, that’s the problem; let me elaborate: When I go to the “start” button in KDE, I am presented with about three billion choices. If I go to “Editors,” I see ten different kinds. For system utilities, there’s about a hundred. WHY?! I don’t need a thousand little useless applications that look like college-undergraduate-projects rather than professional software. I don’t need ten editors, I need ONE really good one: this means, Microsoft Word. I don’t want a hundred system utilities, I need ONE comprehensible configuration tool, meaning, the Control Panel.

And the list goes on and on and on. I know that Windows XP has its problems, but nowhere is it as annoying and stupid as Linux. Jesus, I hate that OS so much, it’s not even funny.

There, I had to get that off my chest. I detest it when people criticize Microsoft when in fact Windows XP is the greatest OS that there is. They fixed the bugs, they fixed the crashes, they fixed pretty much everything. Stop blaming Microsoft! They produce the best software there is! I don’t care if you have hundreds of idiots trying to program and “fix” Linux at the same time worldwide; Microsoft has got 50,000 employees paid around-the-clock full-time to do this stuff. They are better.

[Quit Rant]

Cheers.