Time for a new 'Reasonably Priced Computer' [Part 1]

Well I've had my trusty iMac 17" for over 2 years now, whilst it's been a great computer for general home & business use with a smattering of games (mainly World of Warcraft) it's starting to show it's age when I'm running several applications at once.

I regularly have Microsoft Entourage, Apple Mail, several Safari & Firefox windows, multiple terminal sessions, iTunes, Adium for IM all open at once.

Last week I needed to fire up an XP virtual machine to talk a client through something on the phone, I use VMware Fusion for this. It allows me to run an XP or Vista session on top of my Mac's operating system OSX. However it was not a nice experience, my iMac became very slow and what should have been a quick 5 minute call turned out to be a "I'll call you back shortly" call!

I'd had enough, I needed something quicker, more powerful, more upgradeable!

I'd already got my Mac full on ram, my early 2006 Core Duo model only takes 2gb maximum so upgrading the memory was not an option. I could purchase another iMac I guessed but that was an expensive route and I'd probably be left in the same situation in 2 or 3 more years time.

So I started thinking about moving back to a PC for my general work/business and games machine. I could either sell the iMac, move it upstairs for Michelle to use, or put it in the kitchen/breakfast bar for general use and as a MythTV client, whatever it would not be wasted.

I looked at Dell and HP off the shelf kit but in order to get a decent video card I'd have to fork out more than I would like. So after a little research and asking other people for their opinions I came up with the following components to build my own PC:-

• Processor Intel Core 2 duo E8400 @ 3Ghz £130 Misco/138525


• Motherboard Asus P5K socket LGA775 motherboard £84:99 Misco/138064


• hard disk1 Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200rpm SATA £55 Misco/Q116350


• hard disk2 As above. £55 Misco/Q116350


• Video card PNY GeForce 8800GT 512Mb PCI-Express graphics card £130 Misco/Q122039


• Case Antec Sonata III PC Case with earthwatts 500W power supply unit £75 Misco/Q110981


• Memory 2 x 2gb kit PNY 800Mhz – PC2-6400 £55 Misco/Q136428


• DVDRW Liteon 20x black £15 Misco/140418


• Monitor HANNSG HI221D 22 TFT £110 Misco/HI221D


• Total excluding shipping. £710

I could have probably shaved a few quid off that order if I'd shopped around and got parts from several different suppliers but I decided to play it safe and use my favorite component supplier Misco UK.
I place quite a few orders with Misco and over the past 2 years or so of using them, they have been consistently good. I placed the above order on Wednesday at 5pm with "1 to 3" day shipping and all the items arrived safe and sound by lunch time the following day, brilliant!

In part 2 I'll discuss the components in more detail and show you photos of the build process.

Microsoft Partner Program

Well, sorry for not posting in a while but this sort of thing really gets my back up I'm afraid.
You see, I was just contemplating signing up for the Microsoft Action Pack, for 200 quids this gets you a years subscription to lots of microsoft software, including Windows Server 2008, Exchange 2007, Vista Premium etc etc, good value. There are some restrictions however. As I was contemplating upgrading my Windows Server 2003 and Exhange 2003 server this seemed like a ideal time to 'enroll'.

Anyways, from my iMac I decided to start the enrollment process, first step is to sign in with a silly microsoft windows Live ID, Sounds really cool huh?! but it's not, it was Microsofts attempt to get everybody to have a single sign in account for everything, kinda pants really. They are still hanging on to it for now and as there seems to be no way round it I had to begin the process.

I already have a 'Live ID' which I use for MSN Messenger (or whatever fancy new name it has these days, no doubt having 'Live' in the title) so I proceeded to sign in with that, all good so far until I clicked 'sign-in'

BOOM! "Browser Support Warning"

Problem Encountered
You are using an unsupported Internet browser. Please use the most recent non-beta version of Internet Explorer to access this page. If you continue you will likely experience performance issues. Please download this supported version or proceed to the PMC page you requested.

How damn annoying, I tried with both Safari and Firefox, no go. So I either go find a Windows PC and try again or just forget it??