Posts Tagged ‘computer purchases’

A small cloud has appeared on the horizon. Much to my surprise, The Other Half finally gave approval for the purchase of this lot:

I got a newer Lynnfield i7 processor than I’d originally planned, only 8GB of RAM rather than the intended 12, and a mere 512MB of video card memory (on the perfectly reasonable grounds that Solitaire doesn’t exactly require much more than that!). The devil in the detail of this good news, however, is the LG Blu-Ray drive… because I’m not entirely certain how much support there is for Blu-Ray within Ubuntu. I’ve had a quick trip round the Google traps and the indications aren’t exactly brilliant, for example. I mean, I’m not saying, ‘Hello Windows 7′ at this point, but ‘twould appear that Windows is a lot comfier in regard to, for example, backing up a purchased Blu-Ray disk than Linux is at the moment. I suppose I could install the new drive in TOH’s PC, which is resolutely Windows 7 already, but I’d much rather keep the goodies for myself: call me old fashioned in that respect, if you must. Some days of research are clearly required before I start panicking, therefore: but there is just the teensiest whif of a Winodws cloud on the horizon as I write. Fingers crossed, I suppose.

My Dell LCD monitor has developed a weird, thick line of darker-than-normal pixels cutting into the very top left corner of the screen:

…just near the Gnome icon, next to the ‘Applications’ menu item. It’s not a monitor configuration issue, either (such as a bad trapezoidal adjustment), because -if I take the trouble to look carefully- the mouse pointer and menus are visible under the thick black line, just very much darker than normal. But that you can see these things at all under the line means the screen is actually displaying a properly-square image, just with this nasty band of dark pixels to screw things up.

It’s such a trivial thing, really… but it’s incredibly annoying. So, naturally, thoughts turn to replacing the entire PC. Well, wouldn’t you?!

Here’s what I am contemplating buying:

I’ll be buying two lots of the RAM, of course, so that makes 12GB in all. No hard disks, because the ones I’ve got already are perfectly serviceable. But there’s the all-important new monitor that makes all the other stuff, er… necessary -and which makes the black pixel band go away, which is the important thing. I could wait a bit, too, I suppose and try and nab one of the new i7 870 “Lynnfield” processors. But I hate being patient.

I have, as usual,to put a business case together for this for TOH. I think the “but it’s got a Blu-Ray drive, so now we can watch High-Def movies” line should swing it, don’t you?

Wish me luck…