Vista and Me

Fairly straightforward. The cardboard box with the case screws was wedged firmly behind the drive trays and had to be destroyed to get it out. Then I realised the trays slide out. LOL

The Antec case was really nice. There are slide-out guides for the 5.25″ front-mounted drives and the internal 3.5″ drives. The internal drives also have silicone vibration isolation mounts. The case for the HTPC is a Themaltake Tenor and it was really fiddly installing the drives in it. All sorts of screws and cover plates. And it was only case in 20 years of experience where I’ve had to file the floppy disk opening to get the drive in. So the Antec was pleasant in comparison.

I had a little trouble getting the motherboard in. On the first attempt, one set of port springs (little pieces of bent metal from the IO plate that press against the outside of the ports) had stuck down and were trying to short out the serial port. Then I found a problem with the CPU installation. The instructions said to install the CPU before putting the motherboard in the case and install the HSF (Heatsink/Fan) after. Then they said to check the underside of the motherboard after fitting the HSF to closely check the inner pins had pushed through fully. The case didn’t have a removable “bottom” panel so there was no choice but to remove the motherboard to check. Life would have been easier if the other side of the case was removable.

Fitting the front panel connectors was the usual hassle (I missed installing the Reset switch). The motherboard has the single IDE socket right down the bottom which means the supplied cable is barely long enough to reach the DVD drive and is not long enough to allow the drive to be pulled out on the slide-out guides. There’s quite a lot of excess cabling but it doesn’t interfere with the CPU fan.

I bought the components from TX Computers. Of the various computer shops in Sydney, I find them the best. Not always the cheapest, they are convenient, competent and reliable.
The specs of the machine are as follows:

I also got a basic DVD-ROM drive and simple keyboard and mouse. I already have enough of these and I just need something to use while I move the data and applications off the old PC. I also have a nice Samsung 19″ LCD.

Overall, the machine is at the top of consumer grade PCs. I could have bought a high-end Dell, but this way I know exactly what I’ve got and I get the fun of building it (yes, I could have paid TX to build it for me).

I have a couple of XP machines (one regular PC and one HTPC) and I’ve been watching the Vista rollout for the last year. Microsoft have endured enormous bad press over Vista. But my machines are getting old and I really need to know whether the problems are real.

I have to admit that I have a few strange requirements but mostly I run pretty ordinary software. My single biggest problem is Second Life. This “game” sucks the life energy from your PC and spits out the dry husks. But I’m addicted. I’ve added more RAM and a new (7600GS) video card but the performance still sucks.

Recently, a couple of sudden reboots in one day put getting a new PC at the top of my list. So, let’s find out if Vista works!