A few weeks ago the battery of my wife’s MacBook died. I could buy a new battery and continue my Mac journey, but I decided to put it up for sale on Craigslist. That was this morning at 1am.
The MacBook is now gone, and I don’t foresee another Mac in my home for a long while, unless I get another for free. 
A few weeks ago a friend of mine got a good deal on a Gateway PC. He bought it to edit his photos, which coincidentally will also come from a Nikon D80. While my laptop offers ubiquitous surfing opportunities, it comes up short in the area of photo editing. My interests in the current state of PC hardware piqued once again.
I first thought about buying pre-built. Computers from Cyberpowerpc.com looked cheap enough but the customer reviews worried me. Dell computers weren’t that cheap once I loaded them up with my ideal configurations. And there was no way I were to spend thousands of dollars to buy from boutique dealers just to play games…oh wait, I do NOT play games. So I was to build one myself after all.
After some Googling and soul searching, I placed an order this past Monday on Newegg.com for the following parts to build my Desktop PC 2007.
Parts arrived on Thursday and Friday. The CPU thermal paste went AWOL however, so I canceled that item online and bought it locally.
This build went more smoothly than my HTPC from a year ago (posts one, two, and three), partly because this time around I was a tad more experienced and partly because the 2007 components were easier to work with. The chassis of my choice, Sunbeam tool-less mini tower case, was far roomier than the Zalman HD160, the size of which was constrained by AV component standards. In addition, Zalman case required more hardware fidgeting that could have come pre-installed. I was also more pleased with Asus’ motherboard than last year’s Gigabyte board - Asus included little touches such as the Q-Connector that made wire connections less cumbersome.
By Friday evening I was done with the build. I am now going through the tedious process of installing and customizing software to my liking.
I salvaged an used IDE hard disk from (what I consider) a broken down consumer device. I bought an external USB 2.0 hard disk enclosure for it, but I couldn’t get Windows XP to partition and format it because the drive was partitioned in a non-Windows sanctioned way. Having to deal with an USB drive instead of a native IDE one didn’t help either. XP wouldn’t even recognize the drive some times. Ubuntu also failed. I was almost ready to crack open my Media Center PC and go the internal IDE route when it dawned on me: why not try the MacBook?
And it worked. Using the Mac OS 10.4, I was able to repartition and format the hard disk, still in its USB enclosure, as FAT32. Unfortunately I would still encounter problems when converting the format to NTFS on XP, but I could use the drive in the mean time.
Hooray for MacOS!
[update @ 2006-12-11T19:00-8.00] Just confirmed that the hard disk I used yesterday was faulty. The second salvaged hard disk is being formatted by XP without incident as I type this post.
I have always wanted to get a Microsoft Natural Ergo Keyboard 4000. Now I finally got one at work. Though I won’t get to use it much until I come back from my vacation.
I was about 70% happy with yesterday’s MacWorld product announcements. I was looking forward to Intel Macs, and they were indeed announced yesterday. Today I read that there is a hint that Intel Macs can run Windows. Cool, dual boot!
The missing 30% of satisfaction is due to the lack of 12-inch Intel iBooks whose price would jibe better with my purchase ability. There is a rumor that covers that front as well.
Now all I have to do is wait. And wait. And wait.
[update @ 2006-01-11 14:29] Apple/Intel FAQ has much more detailed info about Intel Macs. The conclusion seems to be that only Vista can run on Intel Macs, not XP.
My right shoulder has been sore for the past couple of days, and it hasn’t gone away with R&R like it had in the past. I am starting to wonder if I am getting RSI. This further leads to my thinking whether I should buy myself a more comfortable set of keyboard and mouse. I didn’t want to spend money on equipments at work, but my mind is starting to change since the majority of my computer time is at work.
If I want to buy a keyboard, I would probably get the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, as reviewed by Gear Live.
Apple has revised its iBook line with some updated hardware like faster CPU, more RAM, newer GPU, integrated Bluetooth, better trackpad, etc. Nothing revolutioary, but the price still starts at $999 with these enhancements. I can’t argue with that.
This is probably my first blog entry on Apple products. I am keeping an eye on iBooks these few days because my wife is interested in getting one for herself. And I have always liked that Terminal application in OS X.
Oh, the Mini line has been updated too.
The news of IBM selling its PC business to Chinese computer maker Lenovo is all over Internet. My interest is on what is going to happen to the laptop I couldn’t afford - the ThinkPad.
