Just to be fair to all you M$ folks I decided to build a M$ machine ... gotta really give it a go to be fair when I pick on you all
Here goes -- I got 2 machines for free (1 nec piece of shit ... errrr their propriety version... old mmx 133 and another no name AT A4 size box) problem was ram is limited to how much and lack of compatibility. Besides the nec junker has a blown mother board ???
After reading all the replies above I figured ahhh why not ... I went to buy a new mother ... haha ... my mini tower is sooo old that the folks just smiled at me
both boxes are probably 95' or something like that.
So I decided to forgo the bigger drive for my machine and went slightly overboard.
I got a cheapy $50 ATX A4 case (couldn't find anyting used and small
... gotta keep this covert from the wife
) a Abit BE6 440BX/Slot1/ATX mother for $50 -- used, why buy new
, P3 500 with cooling fan for ... akkk $60 ... the other used CPUs didn't have fans or probably spend more on a fan that fit than on a CPU, and finally 128 PC100 ram for $9 -- total $176 ... the video card (unknown), FD, CD (errr 1x -- probably) and 3 gig HD are from both the above parasited machines. I also got a lan card for $10 and the SCSI was from the NEC piece of shit.
I'm in the middle of building it! Once again can't let the wife know too much
the case is really shiny and new ...
hmmm ... I spent 2 days digging at the used shops and figured this was the best alternative for future use ...
What surprised me was that building a new machine compared to buying a new pre-built ... didn't seem that far different in price except that if you start from close to zero a pre-built with M$ included seemed a slightly better overall deal. Expansion cards surprisingly are pretty close in price for what's available for Macs. CD/DVD for M$ had better deals. The only thing that I really liked is the relative ease of upgrading the CPU for a M$ box.
the word on XP at the shops is
... too much necessary ram and the P4 isn't much better than a P3
... stick with w2000 you're better off!!! <-- they actually said this!
OS X runs pretty happily on a G4 400 and 128 ram!!!
Without finishing the Frankenstein Box ... I really can't say but I still prefer a Mac ... too bad you can get a nice VAIO with a flat panel screen for the same price as a regular G4 tower ...
Now before I end my diary ... How did I do on the parts? I wonder if I got it royally or not???
openoffice + gimp + sketch ...