From: Robert McGovern Date: 2007-09-16T02:03:08+09:00 Subject: Re: How many computers in the house? > What's your inventory count? Hmm lets see, there are 4 active machines running nearly all the time (2 laptops, desktop and server) and two currently not being used (laptop and pc). No good names for my machines, all a bit basic or in most cases just describing its purpose, anyway the in use machines: Macbook - my main machine these days as I don't have a lot of time to sit in my study. This way I can compute while spending time in the company of my wife. 2ghz C2D with 1gb ram. Its my first Mac and for the most part I really like it and OSX though a few things in OSX annoy the heck out of me. Esp the dreaded beachball. Ruby, RubyCocoa & Textmate installed. Kieran - my wifes laptop which is generally hooked upto a 22 inch monitor to watch programs in our living room or piping music into our hifi. Its a Fujitsui Siemens Amilo 1505 or something like that. It runs XP but very badly for some reason and only has 512mb ram. No Ruby. XP - My old main machine, sits in the study and is only really used to play games on the few minutes of free time I have. Its a custom built Shuttle with Athlon XP 2800+, 1GB ram and a AGP Nvidia 6600GTS. Generally runs XP with Ubuntu used occasionally (I love Compiz / Beryl). Ruby on both OS's Server - My server, cobbled together from bits I had left over from old machines and from bits friends had given me. It is a Athlon XP 1800 with 768MB ram, total of 500+GB of data storage (with backup for 400GB of it). It hosts my mail & web server and files for music & video. Currently got a 3DFX Voodoo 3 16MB graphics card which I keep intending to put in another machine to play old games. It runs Ubuntu 7.04 and of course has Ruby on it and used for a couple of tasks. The two non used machines: Laptop - My first laptop bought about 4 years ago now so that I could work while commuting. Can't remember the make, was bought from PC World in the UK. Its a P4 2GHZ with 512MB ram and runs XP & FreeBSD (which I was experimenting with recently). It is kinda broken with a huge crack in the wrist area and the battery is knackered (40 minutes of life). Sadly I can't get a new battery for it and it can't operate with its lid closed so I can't really use it for much other than give to my kids when they are older. Has Ruby and did have Cygwin. Mail - Old Dell box that my wifes former company was selling of for 50 pounds. Something like a 600mhz box with 128mb ram. I did have a copy of XP and my old mail server (Mercury Mail) running on it. Yes XP would run, yes it was slow but I stopped most of the services and could happily run the mail server and the virus scanner in under 128MB of ram. Surprised the heck out of me! Given Away: Dell XPS 133 - Gave that away to someone that simply need to write up poems and stuff. It really is a crock that shops tell you that you need a minimum of 1.x GHZ to do things. 133mhz was quite fast enough for a number of things! Scarely the machine when new cost about 2000 pounds. Custom Built 900mhz Athlon box with 512MB ram. My first own built machine and I loved it. Was also the first Machine that I ever ran Ruby on. Want: A new Games PC but in this day and age is there much point as most stuff is being aimed for games consoles. (I want games like iWar and XWing or Tie Fighter to make a comeback) A Mac Mini / Apple TV to run in the living room rather than my wifes laptop for TV & Video needs. iMac or MacPro for generally usage and development. I tell ya from having my MB I love having a quiet computer. My main XP box makes such a racket its crazy, no quiet listening to music through it. Apologies for boring everyone