My last computer was 400$ from microcenter. quad core w/ 8gigs of ram, windows, stuff.
-------
Hew in drag baby
This thread made me want to reinstall and Play Baldur's Gate 2, so I'm currently reinstalling it. After setup, encountered this gem in the graphics options:
Dusty Trophies
I recall buying a Gateway with a 15 GB hard drive and being told by all my friends that it was massive over kill.
SI Radio has many DJs and listeners whom hold City of Heroes close to their hearts. We will be supporting many efforts to keep CoH ALIVE!!
The current push towards "cloud computing" is about to hit a wall, I think. For one thing, it takes a lot of bandwidth, even if you're just using it for data storage. And at the moment, in the US at least, a lot of ISPs are moving to try to seriously limit the bandwidth available to the "average" customer. Especially the cable companies, who seem to view low cost high bandwidth internet connections as a direct threat to their revenue stream. Or: Why should I pay $60 a month for cable TV, PLUS an internet connection, when I can just have the Internet connection and watch most of what I want (without commercials) from Netflix/HulaHoop/Whatever.com.
The other problem is - if you're dependent on off-site data storage or CPU time, you're kind of up the creek if there's any kind of service interruption. Bad connection? Doom. Scheduled/unscheduled maintenance on *any* of the systems? Doom. Company that owns the hard drives that hold all your data gets robbed/goes out of business/burns down? Doom. Plus, you're at the mercy of someone else for data security. In some cases (such as users who think "Password" is a clever password) this might be an improvement. In others (coughSonycough) this might not be such a good thing.
As far as the original post about data size: I know someone who has a closet full of Commodore 64 and 128 computers, and a lot of the gadgets for them. Commodore 64 (with 64kb onboard RAM) and an external five inch single sided serial floppy drive with 128kb (and fairly fragile) floppy disks, a 1024 baud modem that will only work with the old Ma Bell style telephone receivers (most modern cordless phones won't sit in the cradle properly) and a tape cassette drive. Oh yes, and a dot matrix printer that weighs as much as a small scooter.
See, that's my situation as well. Just need it mainly for CoH and some games from the mid 2000s... such as the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and HalfLife series. I don't really feel I have to be on the bleeding edge, but now that I KNOW I can build a system from the ground up, I can more confidently invest in better tech when I need to.
This is my first ever SATA machine, and I must say, I like it a lot so far. I'm still trying to fill up that 2TB hard drive though.. O.o
-Da Bug
"I swear you could fling a man hole cover across the street and hit more notes than 90% of those idiots on American Idol" -Desmodos
"Every time you post I feel like I been hit with a fist full of smart! Thanks." - Volken re: Sucker Punch
Arc #36984 V'kta A'cha Vox'm