Friday, June 02, 2006
My New PC (Thanks to IRS and Progress Package)
From the extra money that came from the Income tax refunds, and from Singapore's Progress Package, i finally got a budget to buy a new PC.
Initially, i planned to buy the parts and assemble a PC myself. But as i was going through the sites that monitors sales/deals like FatWallet, TechBargains, GotApex etc, i saw this great deal of a Dell Dimension 5150 that comes with a free 20" widescreen LCD monitor, that looks like this:
The price was about 599 USD, and for that kind of price, i cant even buy the parts with that amount, let alone just the LCD monitor, which actually is still retailing on Dell at about 500 USD.
Since i'm planning to be playing some games on this new PC, i also added a low-priced 3D card, which had a 40 dollars rebate and a free Age Of Empires III game. I'm waiting for the rebate cheque, and i sold the AOE3 game on eBay for about 30 dollars. The 3D card, a SLI with 256 meg ram, will cost me about 40 dollars only. I dont mind the slightly lower specs on the card, considering how much i actually paid for it!
Add in my wireless headphones (i had two sets actually, one from Sennheiser and the other one is a China brand thingy), my current wireless desktop keyboard/mouse set from the company store, and a current PC CAM 600 from Creative, it's as good as it can be for the $$ i paid hehe.
I had some old gamepads from Gravis, which are basically the best and longlasting gamepads you can find, and used them for a week or two before i added a Logitech Wireless Rumblepad2, and the wireless gamepad allows me to sit back on the recliner or the sofa and still be able to play some arcade games or launch a Media Center-like frontend to the videos/games/music etc. I was so impressed by the quality of GameEx that i registered almost immediately. It's definitely a great value software! Do check it out.
Here's my newly acquired PC, and we were doing a video conferencing with the twins a few weeks ago. Kenny's the coin bank that's always around, though now it's collecting US coins instead. The wire that goes from the back to under the table is for the old Gravis gamepad.
Here's the desktop with most of the wired gadgets gone. The PC Cam is not connected in this picture, and the Rumblepad2 is right in the middle below the widescreen.
The Rumblepad2 isnt my first choice, but the controller that i wanted is still only available in a wired form for PC, even though it has the wireless version for the Xbox 360.
If this controller's wireless gadget comes out soon, if this news is actually true, i'll definitely replace the Rumblepad with it. Still waiting for it to be released though.
The first game i bought, from Half Price Books, was an used copy of the Halflife anthology,
.
A rather old game, but still, a classic. Catching up on the 7 years since my last PC upgrade!! haha.
Perhaps it will be 2012 before i can get a PC powerful enough to play Halflife 2, if ever.
Initially, i planned to buy the parts and assemble a PC myself. But as i was going through the sites that monitors sales/deals like FatWallet, TechBargains, GotApex etc, i saw this great deal of a Dell Dimension 5150 that comes with a free 20" widescreen LCD monitor, that looks like this:
The price was about 599 USD, and for that kind of price, i cant even buy the parts with that amount, let alone just the LCD monitor, which actually is still retailing on Dell at about 500 USD.
Since i'm planning to be playing some games on this new PC, i also added a low-priced 3D card, which had a 40 dollars rebate and a free Age Of Empires III game. I'm waiting for the rebate cheque, and i sold the AOE3 game on eBay for about 30 dollars. The 3D card, a SLI with 256 meg ram, will cost me about 40 dollars only. I dont mind the slightly lower specs on the card, considering how much i actually paid for it!
Add in my wireless headphones (i had two sets actually, one from Sennheiser and the other one is a China brand thingy), my current wireless desktop keyboard/mouse set from the company store, and a current PC CAM 600 from Creative, it's as good as it can be for the $$ i paid hehe.
I had some old gamepads from Gravis, which are basically the best and longlasting gamepads you can find, and used them for a week or two before i added a Logitech Wireless Rumblepad2, and the wireless gamepad allows me to sit back on the recliner or the sofa and still be able to play some arcade games or launch a Media Center-like frontend to the videos/games/music etc. I was so impressed by the quality of GameEx that i registered almost immediately. It's definitely a great value software! Do check it out.
Here's my newly acquired PC, and we were doing a video conferencing with the twins a few weeks ago. Kenny's the coin bank that's always around, though now it's collecting US coins instead. The wire that goes from the back to under the table is for the old Gravis gamepad.
Here's the desktop with most of the wired gadgets gone. The PC Cam is not connected in this picture, and the Rumblepad2 is right in the middle below the widescreen.
The Rumblepad2 isnt my first choice, but the controller that i wanted is still only available in a wired form for PC, even though it has the wireless version for the Xbox 360.
If this controller's wireless gadget comes out soon, if this news is actually true, i'll definitely replace the Rumblepad with it. Still waiting for it to be released though.
The first game i bought, from Half Price Books, was an used copy of the Halflife anthology,
. A rather old game, but still, a classic. Catching up on the 7 years since my last PC upgrade!! haha.
Perhaps it will be 2012 before i can get a PC powerful enough to play Halflife 2, if ever.
that's a nice screen there!