Developing Storm

Thursday, July 15, 2004
Many years ago I was handed a check for $20,000 dollars by the owner of the company I worked for and asked to go pick up two new Compaq Deskpro (20mhz AT class 80386) computers from a local computer store. These were top of the line machines at the time and I was going to be one of the lucky ones to get one of these babies.

Even then when computers were less of a commodity than they are now that was a lot of money to spend on two PCs. Today as I was dreaming about getting a faster computer, I decided to look around and see what sort of computer I could get for 10 grand today.

It's wasn't that hard to get up into that price range but in doing so It usually required I purchase a 30" flat panel display along with the machine. I've never seen a monitor that large but I believe I could find a use for all that screen real estate.

If I was in the market for an Apple I could get a very nicely configured dual processor G5 with 4GB of RAM and a 30 inch flat panel display for $9652.00. 

 Dual 2.5GHz PowerPC G5
 4GB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) - 4x1GB
 2x250GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
 NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL
 Apple Cinema HD Display (30" flat panel)
 AirPort Extreme Card
 Bluetooth Module
 56k V.92 modem
 8x SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
 PCI-X Gigabit Ethernet Card
 Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse - U.S. English
 Mac OS X - U.S. English
If I was thinking more along the lines of a gaming PC I could get a very cool Alienware ALX Aurora for $9,675.00 
 
Power Supply: 650 Watt Max Power Supply
ALX Heavy Duty Power Cable: Alienware® ALX System Power Cable
Thermal Management System: Alienware® ALX Active Liquid Cooling System
Performance-Enhancement: Alienware® ALX System Performance-Enhancement
Performance-Enhancement: Alienware® ALX Graphics Performance-Enhancement
Motherboard: ASUS® A8V Deluxe - VIA K8T800 Pro Motherboard
Processor: AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-53+ Processor with HyperTransport Technology
Memory: 2GB Corsair™ XMS Dual Channel DDR SDRAM at up to 550MHz - 4 x 512MB
Video Card: NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6800 Ultra 256MB DDR3 w/Digital and S-Video Out
Video Optimizer: AlienAdrenaline: Video Performance Optimizer
Video Cooling: AlienIce™ 2.0 Video Cooling System
System Drive: Extreme Performance - Serial ATA RAID 0 - 148GB (74GB x 2) 
  Western Digital® Raptor™ 10,000 RPM w/16MB Cache
Storage Drive: Extreme Performance - Serial ATA RAID 0 - 500GB (250GB x 2) 
  Western Digital Caviar® SE 7,200 RPM w/16MB Cache
Optical Drive One: Plextor® PlexWriter Premium 52x32x52x CD-RW Drive
Optical Drive Two: Plextor® PX-712A 12x DVD±R/W Drive
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster® Audigy® 2 ZS High Definition 7.1 Surround
Network Connection: High Speed Gigabit Ethernet
ALX High Performance Network Cable: Alienware® ALX Network Cable
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional
Display One: NEC 30" LCD 3000 Black
Speakers: Creative GigaWorks™ THX® S750 - 7.1 700-Watt Speakers

Both machines look great. Unfortunatly, I don't expect IBM will be supplying me with either any time soon.


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