Why I should buy a new Desktop and a Laptop computer

I think this is getting to be obvious. I'd say my next major purchase after going to South Africa this summer will be a new Dell Desktop computer. Why, you might ask?!? Well, my Laptop sure is awesome, but now that I'm not moving countries every 4 months due to the craziest Waterloo degree around, I finally have some stability and also don't need to drag my poor computer with me every 4 months to a new apartment. So with less moving... comes more sweet, sweet computer potential.

MAN THIS IS AWESOME. Seriously Larry Smith has it right - the Computer Hardware industry is seriously backwards. The technology keeps improving, hand over fist every second, and at the same time things are getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. Pretty amazing.

So anyway I was getting all excited about computery stuff and just checked out what Dell's got right now. This is pretty amazing!!

For $1100, I could get this computer, and mannnn it's sweet.

• PROCESSOR - Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E4500 (2MB L2 Cache,2.20GHz,800 FSB)
• OPERATING SYSTEM - Microsoft Vista Home Premium
• MONITOR - 22 inch SP2208WFP Wide Flat Panel with Webcam and Mic
• MEMORY - 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz- 4DIMMs
• HARD DRIVE - 500GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
• OPTICAL DRIVE - 16X DVD+/-RW Drive
• VIDEO CARD - ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO 128MB
• SOUND - Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
• KEYBOARD & MOUSE - Dell USB Keyboard and Dell Optical USB Mouse
• FLOPPY & MEDIA READER - Dell 19 in 1 Media Card Reader
• MODEM & WIRELESS - 56K PCI Data Fax Modem
• SPEAKERS - Dell AS501 10W Flat Panel Attached Spkrs for UltraSharp™ Flat Panels

So that is pretty darn amazing. The only thing that might be worth upgrading would be to a 24" flat panel, and a Blu-Ray Player and a better Dolby 7.1 system to attach to a nicer sound card. And maybe an NVidia 256MB Video card at least. But that would still be well below $2000. I think this machine is already pretty amazing, and 4GB of RAM already at this price?!?!??! That is insane!! The screen sounds really nice too, and pretty awesome that it's got a mic and camera built in as I am using video chat a lot.

So anyway, it's a while before I think I'll want to get a new computer, the laptop is still totally awesome although it's about 3 years old now so it's getting there. I am thinking I might get a new Desktop first, and then later on get an Apple MacBook to replace my laptop. If I did that I'd just get the tiny screen so that I could have a pretty light laptop that would be easy to travel with. My machine now is a massive 17" Laptop, it's about 10 lbs, and it totally rocks the house, but it's a beast to travel with. So my intention would be to get a nice big crazy awesome Desktop machine at home, and then have a very light laptop for whenever I am going traveling or on the bus or on a train trip or just to a coffee shop or whatever. Sounds pretty good eh?

The cheapest MacBook now is about $1099, and that's a Dual Core 2.1 Ghz which is pretty sweet, and 1 Gb RAM (I'd probably upgrade to 2 Gb) and a 100 Gb drive (I'd probably upgrade to 250 Gb)... otherwise it looks pretty good. That plus warranty and minus a sweet discount via some friends and I would be looking at about $1000 for this too. It's still crazy when you compare what you can get for the price Laptop vs. Desktop, but still for $1000 this is really quite amazing.

Anyway it's late so I am off to bed. Yeah this stuff rocks.