A week with a PC
After building my PC and spending a week on it, I have a few negative things to say about it.
1) With a mighty Radeon 9700 Pro and plenty of CPU and RAM behind it, DVD playback is jerky in WMP, RealOne and ATi's own players. Only PowerDVD (came with my DVD-ROM drive) played movies without dropping frames. PowerDVD 4.0 XP's sound output seems muffled though.
2) I tried installing an running the Exact Audio Copy (EAC,) but it won't recognize any CDs I put in either one of my optical drives.
3) Windows XP Pro's reactivation process is horrendous. I originally used my copy on Virtual PC, but switched it over to my new PC and was confronted with the activation dialog. Of course it told me I had used my CD key too many times, so it told me to reactivate. This process involves relaying a 54 digit string of numbers to a phone rep and typing in an additional 42 digit string of numbers to reactivate your copy of Windows XP.
4) It takes about 20 seconds for a PC to go into hibernation...way too long.
5) The onboard audio on my pretty expensive ASUS P4PE motherboard had so much line noise, it forced me to buy a real sound card.
6) Live window dragging results in tearing and delayed redraw of objects in the background.
7) The P4 CPU itself is running hotter than any of my friend's CPUs, and I'm using an Alpha PAL8942 heatsink and a perfectly applied layer of Arctic Silver III thermal grease.
8) Multitasking in Windows is very tedious. The Windows paradigm is to have many maximized windows open while you switch between them using the taskbar. Several tasks take way longer than they should. Any task involving changing your theme settings takes several seconds.
9) SPAM. I got 2 SPAM messages via Windows Messenger, the network service that admins sometimes use to make announcements. The only way to stop it is to disable it with Admin tools. I'm absolutely horrified at the prospect of reading my e-mail with Outlook...
The list could go on and on. Basically, using a Mac is a much more enjoyable experience for me...except when playing games. There are a few nice things about my PC, like Yamaha's Disc T@2 feature actually working and DVD-Audio support in my Sound Blaster Audigy 2, but jeez, running Windows really is a chore.
1) With a mighty Radeon 9700 Pro and plenty of CPU and RAM behind it, DVD playback is jerky in WMP, RealOne and ATi's own players. Only PowerDVD (came with my DVD-ROM drive) played movies without dropping frames. PowerDVD 4.0 XP's sound output seems muffled though.
2) I tried installing an running the Exact Audio Copy (EAC,) but it won't recognize any CDs I put in either one of my optical drives.
3) Windows XP Pro's reactivation process is horrendous. I originally used my copy on Virtual PC, but switched it over to my new PC and was confronted with the activation dialog. Of course it told me I had used my CD key too many times, so it told me to reactivate. This process involves relaying a 54 digit string of numbers to a phone rep and typing in an additional 42 digit string of numbers to reactivate your copy of Windows XP.
4) It takes about 20 seconds for a PC to go into hibernation...way too long.
5) The onboard audio on my pretty expensive ASUS P4PE motherboard had so much line noise, it forced me to buy a real sound card.
6) Live window dragging results in tearing and delayed redraw of objects in the background.
7) The P4 CPU itself is running hotter than any of my friend's CPUs, and I'm using an Alpha PAL8942 heatsink and a perfectly applied layer of Arctic Silver III thermal grease.
8) Multitasking in Windows is very tedious. The Windows paradigm is to have many maximized windows open while you switch between them using the taskbar. Several tasks take way longer than they should. Any task involving changing your theme settings takes several seconds.
9) SPAM. I got 2 SPAM messages via Windows Messenger, the network service that admins sometimes use to make announcements. The only way to stop it is to disable it with Admin tools. I'm absolutely horrified at the prospect of reading my e-mail with Outlook...
The list could go on and on. Basically, using a Mac is a much more enjoyable experience for me...except when playing games. There are a few nice things about my PC, like Yamaha's Disc T@2 feature actually working and DVD-Audio support in my Sound Blaster Audigy 2, but jeez, running Windows really is a chore.
Comments
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The list could go on and on. Basically, using a Mac is a much more enjoyable experience for me...except when playing games. .</strong><hr></blockquote>
You are right, i buy a PC just to play games, and i am happy with that.
Concerning the sound i have not this problems with my gygabite KT4 ultra card, it is connected with altec lansing 2100, and i am quite impressed with the sound even you do must listen at full amplification to avoid distorsion (but the current level is sufficiant to annoy my wife ...)
The CD burner and DVD writer are quite loud, but the PC itself is less noisy than my powermac G4 533.
Considering window XP, i did not configurate it myself, so it prevent me to enter these atrocious digit keys. Windows XP don't crash to much, i'd say it's below mac os X and classic (classic crash a way too much to my advice : i use it at my office in my G3 333, and it crash one time per day, i am under 8.6 and never was able to go to OS 9 without reformating the whole HD. I have many old drivers for old devices : i won't update it).
I'm going to built a cheap PC for rendering purposes, and I'm just curous what other people are doing.
$100 - Antec Perfomance Plus 1080AMG with TruePower 430 watt power supply
$160 - ASUS P4PE with FireWire, Serial ATA, Gigabit LAN, etc.
$190 - Intel P4 2.4B
$32 - Alpha-Novatech PAL8942 bare heatsink
$20 - 6 Panaflo 80x25 mm "L1A" low speed fans
$160 - Corsair XMS 512 MB PC2700 RAM
$50 - black Pioneer 16x DVD-ROM drive
$110 - black Yamaha CRW-F1 44x CD-RW
$30 - rounded cables for 4 IDE drives and a floppy drive.
$20 - black Sony floppy drive
$320 - ATi Radeon 9700 Pro
$225 - Dell 992 19" CRT
Everything I bought came in retail packaging. OEM prices really aren't that much better, especially when looking for black components. I transplanted an old HDD, keyboard, mouse, etc. Other than the CPU and monitor, everything is pretty much top of the line...for the next couple of weeks anyway...