Which way do you prefer or "Have it your way."

[Mrs Beanbag]

I like to build PCs, but I build them for quietness and efficiency rather than for performance. Also I prefer small systems to huge tower cases.

[Mrs Beanbag]

I know what you mean, I wished for a while that some manufacturer would just produce a full set that all goes together and is guaranteed to work properly, but you have to get a bit from here and a bit from there and hope for the best. Personally I don't even bother with graphics cards, onboard graphics is good enough for me since I don't play PC games so that takes one of the major headaches out of the equation.

It made sense to me that someone should just pick a configuration and tailor a Linux distribution to it and sell PCs with that Linux distro. There is just too much choice, it's bewildering.

Although personally I only buy AMD CPUs, I built an Intel system once, never again.

[Mrs Beanbag]

is it a laptop? I got a laptop recently that is really annoying, the hard drive makes this noise like snipping of scissors. The worst bit is that when that happens the whole thing freezes up, like it keeps parking the head even though it has to access the disk to do anything at all such as typing some text.

I hate that laptop.

Oh it also reboots itself without asking, even while the lid is shut, somehow. I had applications open! Not anymore

[Mrs Beanbag]

I don't like them either but I needed it for work, unfortunately. That and I needed something with Windows on and there are already 3 PCs, an Xbox 360 and 2 Amiga 1200s in this room so it's getting kind of crowded.

Good luck finding a 2Tb SSD by the way. Samsung Spinpoint used to be the best quiet HDDs but they sold their hard drive department to Seagate so who knows anymore.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Sounds like the drive is trying to power down really aggressively to save juice

I think so but I tried to turn off all the power saving features to no effect. It does it even when it's plugged into the mains. Stupid thing.

The screen is utterly dreadful as well. Don't buy a Lenovo Thinkpad that's my advice to everybody. They used to be good though.

[Mrs Beanbag]

You can get a 3.2Tb SSD if you have 15 grand spare. But you can get 1Tb HDD for £40 ish so I wouldn't bother yet. Use SSD for the OS and frequently accessed files, and HDD for bulk storage.

As for HDD in the laptop, well I didn't want to pay very much for a work computer, that's the simple answer. You get what you pay for I guess but it still cost me more than I'd pay for a quiet desktop machine. I didn't expect that level of rubbish, at any rate.

[Mrs Beanbag]

And if either of those were good desktop OSes, I might care.

I've been using Linux for years, whenever I have to use Windows for work purposes, I think "Windows... it's not ready for the desktop."

Linux has its faults but there's plenty to hate about Windows and MacOS, too. You just notice the awful bits you haven't got used to so much more.

[Mrs Beanbag]

I could just use an Amiga with a Genlock and a VCR. Imagine that.

[Mrs Beanbag]

On the subject of loud or quiet fans, I've got an AMD 4850e (45W TDP) with a Scythe Ninja 2 on it. Which is kind of silly. At idle the fan spins at 400rpm. Sometimes. When it can be bothered. If I really push the CPU it goes up to a whisper.

The only other fan in the system is in the PSU, which was a pretty quiet Antec one even though it's only an 8cm fan. I swapped it for a Nexus one anyway. The HDD is in a Xilence silencer/cooler sitting on a sheet of foam on the bottom of the case.

Now I've gone and bought a Cherry G80 mechanical keyboard though. CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK!

[Mrs Beanbag]

I like the keyboard. As long as you don't use it late into the evening somewhere near the bedroom.

Yeah I think I'll stick to the old one for everyday typing. I actually got this one to take to bits. It's cheaper to buy the whole keyboard than just the Cherry MX Keyswitches. And a full set of keycaps to go with them will cost about the same again.

I've a plan to mod it into Amiga layout, will need to replace a few keycaps with custom jobs, and I'll build a new frame and circuit board. Next door neighbour has a CNC machine. There's also the laser cutter at the Edinburgh hacklab.

So what was the question again... do you like everything ready made or build your own? I guess that's that question answered.

Seriously though I think there should be all-in-one systems that are guaranteed to work with AROS or whatever. But maybe not just one model. There were always big box Amigas and low-end wedge case Amigas, I think that's not such a bad idea. Support essentially two different models, a basic one and a bells-and-whistles one, but the former can be upgraded into the latter if you want, one bit at a time, later on.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Everyone should read this book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-Less/dp/0060005696

The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less

The author of The Battle for Human Nature explains why too much choice  has led to the ever increasing complexity of everyday decisions, why too  much of a good thing has become detrimental to human psychological and  emotional well-being, and how to focus our lives on making the right  choices.

[Mrs Beanbag]

"Obsolete" is a silly word. It's just another way of saying something stopped being popular, but with a delusion of objectivity.

[Mrs Beanbag]

We don't even have a TV in the house, we just watch DVDs on an Xbox for our entertainment.

Watching TV on your PC makes some kind of sense though. It saves space -- means you don't need two screens. Mind you I was using a TV as my Amiga monitor back in the day. It's only because PCs needed their own special monitors that it even became an issue. I have a Genlock too. If only I could have used the Amiga as a remote control, through software, it would have been perfect.

[Mrs Beanbag]

The downside to television is that its quantity of programming pales in comparison to the Internet, even if you have 1,000 channels that a drop in the buck compared to video programming on the Internet.  It also makes it easier for people to provide video content.

These are both upsides of television.

[Mrs Beanbag]

"We just watch DVDs on our XBOX360"?
Then you are kind of watching TV.
Its splitting hairs.
And I still value news access.
Primarily because no matter how biased broadcast journalism is, the internet is uniformly worse.

I don't watch TV, but I have a monitor.
Sorry, that just sounds dumb.

Yeah I watch TV shows I guess (but not broadcast live so I don't need a TV license). I never said I didn't watch TV, I said we don't have a TV. Although lately we've been mostly watching Tom and Jerry, which is what the BBC customarily puts on when the schedule is cancelled at short notice.