What hardware are you going to buy in 2009?

[Gruntlord6]

2x2x2x2 i figure this way i won't need to upgrade for a long while. Is a 3gb stick available yet? Would be awesome having 12 ;)

[veK]

I borrowed a small 10" netbook from my father. I hooked it up to my new stereo equipment so I don't have to use my PS3 and the tv all the time when I'm listening to music for hours because they obviously need way more power. Sweet little thingy that small laptop lite, I think I'm getting one for myself soon because the one I borrowed is a) obviously borrowed which means I have to give it back some day and b) not good with its battery. but right now I'm not in the rush to buy one of these asap.

[Andrew]

Yah, if you have a nice stereo and nice main computer tower, set up your music over a music player daemon, and then use the netbook (or any computer) to be able to control the music from anywhere.

http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Wiki

[D2k Sardaukar]

I just bought on-line the Z 2300 of Logitech. I now have the Z4, which is a good set, but my brother got interested in it, so now I'll sell it for a nice price and take a better one.  :)

[Gobalopper]

That is the set I have, they do a good job and best of all don't take up a lot of space.

[Gruntlord6]

im buying an alienware case and psu when i get the cash.

[Andrew]

I bought a 4gb Adata microsd, and 3x 4gb ocz rally2 the other day.

[D2k Sardaukar]

Those USB sticks and SD-things are getting cheaper and cheaper. I remember buying 256MB for like 30 euro. Now you can get over 8 GB for that....  :O

I still have the 256MB... which is too small for a movie or sumthing... hmmm

[Andrew]

I have my old 256mb usb stick. First one I bought for like $40. Use it to hold some windows apps. But it is getting too small for that :( (Damned openoffice taking up 130mb).

Also I have an old 1997 computer somewhere with 3gb hard drive. Compare size of that hard drive with my new microsd...

It will be interesting to see what things are like 10 years from now. 1 terabyte microsd?

[Gruntlord6]

I have my old 256mb usb stick. First one I bought for like $40. Use it to hold some windows apps. But it is getting too small for that :( (Damned openoffice taking up 130mb).

Also I have an old 1997 computer somewhere with 3gb hard drive. Compare size of that hard drive with my new microsd...

It will be interesting to see what things are like 10 years from now. 1 terabyte microsd?

i bought a 1gb to softmod my xbox lol. 10$ canadian.

[D2k Sardaukar]

It is technically not buying, but I won a new Asus laptop with a contest/game for my study. Pretty cool if you ask me. :)

It has Centrino Duo Core, Ati HD 3470 and 3GB memory.

[Khan]

Nice!

[Gruntlord6]

just installed the 9600gt, im very impressed, though I think im under powering the card.

the recommended psu is 400W im using 300w :-

But im good since I can play garry's mod with 16Xaa on very high and at max resolution with 150 fps.

next step is crysis!

[veK]

I'm thinking about getting a XBox360 in addition to my PS3. Although I really like my PS3 (as I did my PS1 and PS2) and will still be using it as my main console and multimedia station, I think I'll get a XBox360 as well because of some games. There are great exklusive titles on the PS3 such as the God Of War-, Uncharted- and Ratchet/Clank-Series but MS has got some nice exklusives too like Gears of War, Mass Effect, more or less the Splinter Cell franchise (though there was a bad port for the PS3 of the last title). The Xbox is pretty cheap now so maybe I'll get one soon.

[Andrew]

Remember the xbox has 50% failure rate. My friends xbox finally died, and is waiting to receive something from MS so he can send it in to be replaced. So without an xbox for about a month or so.

[Gruntlord6]

Remember the xbox has 50% failure rate. My friends xbox finally died, and is waiting to receive something from MS so he can send it in to be replaced. So without an xbox for about a month or so.

its been reduced to 10%-5%, and the new ones have bigger hdds now.

[veK]

the newer xbox version's failure rate is not that high. but if it dies I won't be sending it to MS. I get 2 years of guarantee from the reseller. he handles everything if it dies and I get a new one.

[veK]

got the box today. man this thing is loud as hell. my ps3 is like an ultra silent system compared to the xbox.

I already beat gears of war 1 over the last couple hours (pretty short game) and now I found out that you can install games to the hdd which should reduce the noise level a lot hopefully because the loudest part is without doubt the dvd drive spinning the game disc nonstop.

[D2k Sardaukar]

Where can I find your spice-field, veK? It must be huge...  :)

[veK]

I guess you have to search online as I couldn't make a living without the internet  ;)

but to be honest I don't spent that much "new" money. I'm like a trader and almost everything I buy is handled carefully because I already know I will resell it again some day. So usually I sell something, add a few bucks and buy something else (or an upgraded/better/newer version of the sold item). So I really don't spent that much money all the time although one might think.

[Andrew]

I just purchased 60gb OCZ vertex for $200 (Sale).

Will have detailed thread about installing and performance. Hope everything works out good. Should have it within a week.

EDIT:

Oops, looked inside my computer and I need a SATA cable. I don't want to unplug dvd or hard drive as it could damage motherboard, and I'd kinda like them both running.

Cost $3 or $4 at newegg, but the shipping is $11 or so. Should have waited on the order I placed last night. :(

[D2k Sardaukar]

I just purchased 60gb OCZ vertex for $200 (Sale).

Will have detailed thread about installing and performance. Hope everything works out good. Should have it within a week.

EDIT:

Oops, looked inside my computer and I need a SATA cable. I don't want to unplug dvd or hard drive as it could damage motherboard, and I'd kinda like them both running.

Cost $3 or $4 at newegg, but the shipping is $11 or so. Should have waited on the order I placed last night. :(

Yeah, some detailed info would be nice. Perhaps try to make a bench now also, like how fast certain programs and the pc starts.

[Andrew]

Yah, I'll hopefully do some stopwatch benchmarks before and after.

I have bootchart for ubuntu 9.04 (19 seconds), although I'd be installing 9.10, but I'd still expect it to be cut in half. My current hard drive has many partitions and other things that probably slow it down more than if 1 OS had entire hard drive. Maybe put ubuntu on SSD, and Windows XP can have all of the hard drive.

In the SSD thread I provided two benchmarks using windows software for hard drive speeds. Although I don't expect to be installing windows on the SSD (installing winxp would be silly since not optimised for SSD at all, I'll keep it on normal hard drive), so I'm not sure how to use same benchmark programs. I'll think of something. Most notable difference with software I think will be with firefox and the 25mb sqlite database slowing down the program (type something in url space and you can hear hard drive thrashing, and slow appearing as it searches through the database to find websites). I wish I did install windows just to see if some games would run faster, but that is more of a video card problem that won't be solved until I get a new computer.

I don't have any big programs in ubuntu that take long to load, openoffice is probably the slowest at 3 seconds for blank template. Although with other apps, I can hear hard drive making noise when opening them. I hope to notice overall "snappy" feel to SSD with no delay in opening small apps.

I may try some RAM drive guides to mount some stuff into ram (hopefully firefox ram guide gets improved and works better in ubuntu 9.10).

Hmm, might be a good time to upgrade my ram (probably in several months). I currently have:

2x 512mb DDR2-SDRAM PC2-4300 (266 MHz)  -  [DDR2-533] Nanya Technology (came with computer)

2x 1gb DDR2-SDRAM PC2-5300 (333 MHz)  -  [DDR2-666] Kingston Technology.

Total ram 3gb. The slower 512mb ram would be limiting my speed there. Maybe buy two more 1gb at same speed (333mhz / 667). My max memory module size allowed is 1gb, and max memory is 4gb. Looking at newegg.ca getting 2x1gb of ddr2 667 would cost between $30-40.

[veK]

Well, it was time for some new stuff:

This little thing here is quite awesome. It's a 2,5" hdd enclosure that uses an RFID key to encrypt the data on the disc. I put a 500GB hdd in it and use it mainly for work related files:

I also ordered a 32GB SSD which I will be using in a friend's computer for some time while he borrows my laptop and in a few weeks I will probably put into the laptop when we switch computers back:

I also bought a new mouse, a perfect fit in my hand:

[Xaroth]

just got me one of these:

http://www.sharkoon.com/html/produkte/externe_gehaeuse/sata_quickport_duo/index_en.html?id=10

together with 2x 1.5TB disks to go with it ...

every new hard disk I buy will save me the cost of the enclosure, or around 20-30E if it's one of them 'standard' external drives.. also, I can rip out hard disks from my pcs, and stick it in, to have access to it