DICHOTOMY! - Techno-geek

Are you a Power User?

What's your chassis of choice and what's under the hood? Diesel or unleaded?

My primary machine is:

Generic Pentium 233 with MMX

32 meg RAM
3.2 gig HD, partitioned
33.6 fax modem
24x CD-Rom

My backup machine...

CPU: Compaq Presario CDS 924, 486-DX2-66

32 meg RAM
One 540 meg primary HD partitioned into C:\ and D:\ drives
One 1.08 gig slaved HD partitioned into E:\, F:\, and G:\ drives
A Connor 250 meg Tape Backup system
A 14.4 voice/fax/data modem
A 2X CD-Rom

Monitor: An 17" NEC monitor

Peripherals:

An HP ScanJet 3p (black and white, so sue me, I didn't have the cash)
An HP Laserjet 4M (good workhorse machine!)
A Cannon ColorJet somethingorother - the one with separate color cartridges, which is all that counts!

If I Had the Cash...

I'd probably go for either a top-of-the-line laptop (anything that doesn't have that stupid-assed eraser mouse of IBM's) with a switchable CD-Rom/Floppy bay, a high-speed modem, a network card, and the biggest possible hard drive, (heck, since we're dreaming, how about a cable modem?). I'd hang on to my NEC for the new machine, use my backup monitor for the 486, and turn the 486 into a network server for my apartment. Just because.

What's the secret sauce? Well, just off the top of my head...

Windows 3.1 & Windows 95, dual boot - I don't recommend this!

Microsoft Office Professional 4.3c & Office Pro 7.0 & Office Pro 97

Word
Excel
PowerPoint
Access

Microsoft FrontPage 97 & 98

Lotus cc:Mail Mobile

CorelDraw! 4 (CorelPaint, CorelDraw, CorelCapture, etc.)

Quickbooks Pro 4.0

Quicken Special Edition

Norton Antivirus for Win95

Netscape Communicator

Visio 4.5 Pro

Aldus Pagemaker 5.0

Visual Basic Pro 4.0 (32-bit & 16-bit versions)

Yup. I'm running Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 concurrently. Not recommended, more trouble than it's worth, but I needed it that way for business purposes.
Would I recommend a Compaq? Absolutely. IF you don't want to upgrade anything in it other than the memory. If you do want to make major upgrades and aren't willing to buy Compaq-only products and have them installed by Compaq Authorized Dealers, don't buy Compaq. They're great, solid machines for the off-the-shelf make-it-go kind of computer. For a technoid, no way.

Games? Well, sure.

But ever since that 14 hour stint to beat Myst, everything pales by compare...so now I only play mind-numbing games.

Hearts
Freecell
Adventure (the ORIGINAL "You find yourself on a dirt road..." Adventure)
Centipede

...and then there's NERO

...which makes all computer games pale by compare, but I use the NERO SPELLChequer programs I wrote to learn the spell incants for the game. You, too, can get the SPELLChequer programs for your computer.

Give me attitude! Do a Dorothy! Back to Top