Saturday was the start of a large amount of computer-related change at my house. For some reason, my dad’s Windows 98 machine (his only PC) couldn’t connect to the network. By noon, he had tried everything, from changing the cable to connecting directly through to the gateway box (we have Qwest DSL) to reinstalling TCP/IP, all to no avail.

It was clear now that this was a sign. “Join everyone in the 21st century.” So that day we set out to look for a new PC (no, this isn’t a switch story, you Mac-hugging iWeenies! ). We looked at Circuit City, CompUSA, Best Buy, and Costco (3 of those places sold Macs, by the way.) We went home that day and mulled over the deals we had seen and decided on one from Circuit City. We went there, and what do you know, they were out. So we waited until the next day. On Sunday, we looked through the paper at the CompUSA ads and saw an eMachines T6528 with a good rebate.

Around that time, I was in the market for some more RAM. Oblivion performance was abysmal, and the only part of my PC that didn’t meet the recommended specs was the memory (it recommended 1 GB, I had half of that.) We looked through the Fry’s ad and saw a good deal: 2 GB of Kingston PC3200 for $139 after rebate (I didn’t want to go with a place like Newegg because I hate having to wait for something to crawl through the snail mail.)

After breakfast, we set out that morning, first to Fry’s to get the RAM, then to a few other places, and lastly to CompUSA.  When we came home, we set up the eMachines and I installed my RAM.

I had no problems installing the RAM (I put the GB sticks in slots 1 and 2 on my mobo because I heard that only those slots qualify for Dual-Inline or something like that.) Boot up seemed a bit faster, but the performance boost was really noticeable in games. I fired up Oblivion and noticed that, while it stuttered from time to time, it was nowhere near as bad as before. Opening the inventory menu no longer took 4 seconds, and loading seemed faster, too. The best increase was quitting the game, which used to take upwards of 5 minutes, usually ending with me giving it the three-finger salute. Now it takes half a second to exit. Yay.

The eMachines T6528 came with an AMD 64 3500+ (2.2 GHz), an nVidia GeForce 6100 integrated, and 512 MB RAM. Now, I must commend AMD for making a processor that runs as cool as the 3500+. The machine is totally silent during normal operation. So far, the fans have only spun up when it turns on or resumes from standby.

One of the things we were looking for in the computer is the fact that it didn’t come with a monitor. Unfortunately, the one we got comes with a 17” flat screen CRT. Since my dad already has a 19” CRT, he let me have it. Now I have a dual-head setup with my 15” flat-panel. The CRT is running at 1280 X 1024 60Hz and my flat-panel is at 1024 X 768 60Hz. Having both monitors is really nice, since I can have Visual Basic Express open on one monitor and the beginner ebook I’m using to learn VB.NET open on the other. Even to have the 1280 X 1024 screen is cool since I’ve never gone above 1024 X 768 before.

All in all, the weekend was an eventful one, as well as fun one. My dad finally has a PC that won’t give him too much aggravation for a while (his PC stays on all the time. It wasn’t uncommon for his Win98 PC to have a month of uptime. Unfortunately, if you try to do something with it besides the Internet or solitaire it BSODs.) I have a second monitor and 5 times the RAM. I’m Happy.