Re: I'm looking to buy a new PC so I gotta ask...

Forgot to mention. Re: Vista performance. Supposedly Vista will
pre-cache files based on past activity so if you frequently use a small
set of files/apps those things should load up quicker. I haven't played
with Vista enough to see a difference but it could help performance some
considering that hard drive access is the slowest thing in a modern PC.

I am still considering different disk options:
- 2 mirrored 500GB 7200 RPM desktop drives (current choice).
- 2 mirrored notebook drives to save a little on power, noise, heat.
- 2 mirrored 10K drives (WD Raptors) for the best performance.
- Ditch the mirroring on any of the above to save money, power, noise,
heat. Probably won't do this, though, as I really want reliability.
- Move existing disk to new system. Not likely as I'd like to move to
SATA and my current drives are regular IDE.
It seems the first option is the most balanced; high reliability with
slightly higher heat/noise/power than notebook drives and less
performance & price than the Raptors.


I'm getting high-end hardware as I don't upgrade often anymore so
anything I buy has to last 3-4 years before I'll invest a lot in another
upgrade.

My current PC is a 4 year old Athlon XP 1700 overclocked to 2800, 1GB
PC2100 RAM, Windows 2000, etc. Nice enough but getting a little long in
the tooth and I'm starting to see some hardware instabilities every once
in a while. My wife would rather I replace it with a notebook for her &
then I use her PC, which is comparable to my current PC, but then
_she'd_ have the better hardware and all she does is surf & play light
duty games. What would I gain besides the bill?

I think she's just a little jealous that we bought her mother a notebook
for Christmas last year.