Old PC vs. New PC
You know what I really, really love? The iPhone camera. Yeah, it just takes the sharpest pictures, even in darker settings with almost no grain and hair-raising resolution. That’s why the pics I’m including with this article look so hot. They’re taken from my trusty ole iPhone 3G. (Scroll down a little, they’re all at the bottom)
What they show is that little area of my apartment I like to call “The Office”. Don’t follow this tax advice (please don’t)… but because of that tiny space, I get to expense my rent! It’s awesome. And while your tax savings may differ, you too can have an office like that.
In this article, I’m going to talk about my current setup. As you know, over the next few weeks I’ll be building a Home Office PC, not unlike the one you see. But it will be different in a few key components, and I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to give you a little run through of what I’m using now.
First off, yeah, that’s two towers you’re seeing. I’m only using one. The bigger one. The smaller is the box I had before this one, and it happened to fit perfectly in my high quality IKEA desk. When the time came to give the old one the boot, I didn’t take the case measurements into account. That’s why it’s sitting out there, looking stupid. And that’s why one of the most important things I’ll be considering in the PC we’re building is integration into your home/furniture. It would be nice if things fit.Â
Right now, it’s not so bad for me to have it sitting out there like that: I live alone, and the girls I bring home don’t seem to mind it that much.
Oh, and I’m keeping the old one around because I’m attached to it. Yeah, sentimental bonds.
Now, you have to understand that I’m 27. While I enjoy getting work done, I’m not one to poo poo a good game of UT4 now and then. So not only is this PC good enough for Home Offic-ing, it happens to have a couple of components that could be considered extravagant for the more restrained home office worker. Like the Ultra case with see-through side panel. Or the XFX GeForce 8600GT video card with two DVI outputs. Or the 4GB of RAM. Or the massive 700W power supply. Or even the 1.5TB of storage over four hard drives. Oh, and the 250GB WD MyBook extrnal drive sitting on top. Heck, even the Acer 22-inch LCD could be considered a bit of overkill for the typical home office.
What isn’t overload however is the Brother MFC-240C multifunction printer. If I had a landline, it would be able to fax, photocopy, scan and print. Of course, I don’t have a landline, so it’s a glorified printer/scanner. But still, it’s a good machine to have.
How will the new PC be different? Well, to go along with some of the stuff mentioned in my original article (http://securitywithspeed.com/2008/10/a-general-recipe-for-a-home-office-pc/), it will be smaller. It will have a good webcam (my current one has none). It will not need such a powerful video card, nor as much RAM. Storage is cheap, but since we might be dealing with sensitive data, we’ll have to be careful to get high quality drives, and perhaps arrange them in a RAID configuration.Â
Finally… I think big screens are better. I’m partial to Acer’s 22-inch. While some may consider this overkill, I’m not so sure.
What do you guys think?
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[...] below is a passage of the first article in the series. (The whole thing is here.) Since there’s no PC yet, this article is about the setup I’ve got now, and the [...]
[...] below is a passage of the first article in the series. (The whole thing is here.) Since there’s no PC yet, this article is about the setup I’ve got now, and the [...]