VIDEO GAMER X GETS A NEW COMPUTER

I've been building my sites and using my old Pentium 233 for years, and as time passed the old reliable computer had reached the limits of its capabilities. My hard drive was full to capacity, the CD-ROM stopped working and wouldn't open any more, the metal part of a 3.5 floppy disk broke off inside the floppy drive rendering it unusable, and the cooling fan rattled like a banshee during cold weather. I originally saved up money for a year from my first job to get that PC, I paid about $2000 for it back in 1997, and it certainly payed for itself many times over with all the enjoyment I received from it. The entirety of all my sites was crafted on that old PC. I actually had a local shop put it together for me. All my writings, thoughts, and collected information resided there. It was now 2001, and time and technology had left my autonomous comrade behind. Time was nigh for its successor to inherit the kingdom of my files.

I did some investigating online looking for a suitable replacement. I was thinking first about getting a Pentium 4 machine with lots of Memory and a large HD (need lots of space for MP3's of course! ;) ). One thing that I had wanted to do, that I could never do with my old Desktop was to actually take it with me outside of the room it was in. I mean, I could, but I would have to disconnect all those wires, lug that huge monitor and the tower around and reassemble it somewhere else. That was a pain in the ass. I had been looking at Notebook PCs and coming to some revelations as to how much a computer like this would be perfect for me. After deliberating I decided upon a Notebook (aka Laptop) PC. Really I had a lot to choose from, first Sony, too expensive, and not so great options and poor service. Next I looked at IBM, they were also way too expensive for the options I was looking for. Compaq is just crap. HP = crappy. Toshiba looked nice, nice specs but they were a little too expensive for what I wanted. I checked out Micron, again too expensive with the options I wanted. I found out Quantex went out of business. I eventually narrowed it down to Gateway or Dell. So I did more research. I visited a part of cnet.com where people who actually bought the machine reviewed it, and the Dell Inspiron 8000 got the best reviews from a lot of people out of all the computers I looked at.

I decided upon getting a Dell, so I went to their site and configured the specifications I was looking for, and again it ended up being too expensive. I had just about given up hope on getting a Notebook PC until one day they had a super deal appear on their site that I couldn't refuse. They were selling Pentium III 1.0 Ghz Notebooks with Ultra XGA screens for around $2,000. I was certainly interested. So I configured the specs I wanted and realized I was within the price range I was going for. I called them up that day, and ordered my PC. They doubled my RAM for free, gave me free shipping, and an Extra Notebook battery for free! I was estatic! What an awesome deal! I configured the same specs on IBM's site for a Thinkpad and it was almost $5000!

The computer I got has a Pentium III 1.0 Ghz processor, 256 MB of PC133 Ram, an Ultra XGA 15.0 Inch .20 dot pitch TFT screen, a 32 GB hard drive, 32 MB 4X AGP NVidia Graphics card, An 8x DVD, an 8x CD-RW, 56kbs/10/100 Ethernet Card integrated (not a PCMCIA card). I really didn't know what kind of computer this would be until I received it so I was curious what this notebook would look like. Apparently the computer was so cutting edge that they weren't even built yet and I had to wait almost a month before I even received it. I had seen notebooks in stores and I wasn't impressed with the screen quality, sometimes rather blurry or dark, and a poor viewing angle.

The day finally came, and the UPS guy arrived with the box with my computer. I signed for it, and immediately opened the box on the kitchen table. It was like Christmas. No one in my family ever bought me something this nice for Christmas, so you can imagine how I am when I am able to buy my own cool stuff. I was immediately amazed at how compact everything was. It was so little compared to what I was used to with a Desktop. The keyboard was integrated with the bottom part and the screen opened up. The screen was huge for such a small thing. It was just a hare smaller than my 17 inch PC Monitor. It was totally flat. I sort of marveled at how far technology has come and just looked at it for a few moments. I unwrapped all the wires. They even included a video on how to hook it up and stuff, but I'm not some novice that doesn't have a clue, it's pretty obvious what goes where.

The Notebook PC came loaded for bare with ports. I had ports for everything. It has 2 PCMCIA card slots, 2 USB ports, 1 IEEE1394 Firewire Port, External Speaker Port, External Monitor Port, External Keyboard/Mouse port, docking station port, serial port, parallel port, S-Video out to TV Port, microphone jack, and some other jack I wasn't sure of. I had all the same things that would normally come with your standard desktop. I was impressed. It was small and compact and it could do so much. It remided me of that computer that sits on Captain Picard's desk in the ready room. Man.... technology has really kicked into overdrive at the end of the 20th century.

Once I hooked it up and had it ready to go, I pressed the power button. O_O WOW! Once I got booted up to Windows, I was blown away at the clarity of the screen. It was... better than my desktop PC! It was better than any Notebook PC I've ever seen. The viewing angle was almost a full 180 degrees! I've never seen a TFT screen that flat, and that clear. All I can say is that it kicks ass to have a PC like this. The Laptop has dual pointing devices, a little eraser head pointer in the middle of the keyboard and a touchpad. Both of which I had to get used to, and still find a little odd at times. Once I got some software installed, I was ready to rock and roll. Since I got the PC, I've installed a lot of information, transferred a great deal of files and website info to it.

This was my first experience with new software and hardware and there were some cool things that impressed me. First off, one thing that I had liked on a friend's IMac was a cool screensaver/music program called Itunes. Well, apparently the newest version of WindowsMedia Player has a feature identical to iTunes. With the high res screen those patterns look pretty and rather trippy while listening to my Trance/Techno music or Enya. My PC came with MovieMaker software that I have yet to utilize with my Camcorder until I find a compatable IEEE 1394 cable. I played some 3-D games in hi-res mode like Deus Ex, Unreal Tournement, and Quake III, and they ran smoothly. I recently utilized an awesome capability where I pluged the audio from my External Computer Speakers, to my Sony Trinitron and connected the Laptop to the TV, and had the computer images on the screen and total surround sound. It was beyond awesome. I was surprised at how well the TV handled 1024x768 resolutoin, it was very clear. I played all my downloaded movies on the TV! I watched all the Zelda cartoon episodes that i downloaded right on the big screen like the old times.

Nothing is ever perfect with PC's though, and since I've been using it for a couple of weeks some small problems have cropped up but nothing severly adverse. As it is, Windows ME isn't the greatest operating system in th world. It's okay, but there are glitches now and then. Sometimes the pointer controls get laggy and it almost seems like it's stuck in "right-click" mode, and I have to hit the touch pad several times to break it free. This is an annoyance while playing games. This happens only occasionally. Also sometimes, the pointer will drift by itself until I tap the touchpad and it gives up. I don't know what the deal is, but WinME seems to want to load things by itself. Those annoying popups drive me nuts every time I boot up the machine. It constantly pesters me for upgrades for this software and that. I'll damn well upgrade when I want thank you. Do I want to register the software, no, it's a waste of time all they do is send you piles and piles of spam Email, and crap in your home mail. Don't register, ever unless you absolutely have to. Another oddity with this PC is the heat. Is it really supposed to get THAT hot? There are times when the bottom of the computer is so hot it feels like the surface of a hot car in the summer sun. The cooling fans seem to turn themselves on and off at will. The heat thing worries me. What if it melts down? Somehow I think that pentium III is just too hot for this unit's motherboard to handle. The DVD-ROM has some oddities as well. I put the Starcraft Game CD in there and it spun the thing so fast the whole computer vibrated. Any other CD doesn't do that. After playing the game for an hour, I took it out of the drive and the Disc was molten hot. I mean, what's the deal here? Just something I noticed about the design - boy do those drives look fragile. It's like half a drive, and you put the CD/DVD in there and I could see something like this just failing and breaking so easily. The only hardware that Dell skimped on was the PC speakers. They are a bit on the feeble side located on the left and right panel of the front. They are enough to just pass, but I strongly recommend hooking up your own PC speakers to the headphone jack. It sounds awesome now that I made this modification.

Overall, I'm very happy with my new PC. I've already hooked it up to cable modems and downloaded files from the internet at alarmingly fast speed. I acquired all the Final Fantasy Playstation Movies from the game, Anime Cartoons, Entire Zelda Cartoons. I've gone solo with the PC and taken it outside of the house into the outdoors and played a DVD and listened to music outdoors. It's great having a whole computer the size of hardbound textbook. I've gotten a case for it, to keep it safely sealed on trips. Hopefully it won't have a meltdown and I'll have to call Dell on their warranty. Someday I hope to take a computer like this on a trip somewhere and I can record my memiors in real time.