A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch
I’ve got a jealous grandson. He is envious of me. I think I have figured out why. I recently replaced my HP Pavilion a6342p Desktop PC, circa around 2006 or so. At the time this machine had some pretty impressive specifications. Over the years, I made a few upgrades, but it was still becoming a frustrating machine to use. Sometimes it would take minutes to load a program. One day it will be re‑purposed, probably as a Linux media server.
I bought an Alienware Aurora R7 desktop with some pretty impressive specifications.
• Processor: Core i7 8700K (3.70GHz) Six-Core
• Memory 16GB, Speed DDR4-2666
• HD Interface SATA 6Gb/s, Capacity 2TB
• Video GPU Type NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, Memory 11GB GDDR5X
• Gigabit LAN
• LAN Data Rate Speed 10/100/1000Mbps
• WLAN Killer 1535 802.11ac 2x
• Bluetooth 4.2
• Wireless Technology 802.11ac
• 6 USB 2.0 (Type-A) Ports
• 3 USB 3.1 (Gen 1 Type-A) Ports
• 1 USB 3.1 (Gen 2 Type-A) Port
• 1 USB 3.1 (Gen 2 Type-C) Port
• and much more
I’ll admit it. This machine is overkill for my typical use. When I was running tests, I finally got it to slow down a little. I had opened Scribus (publishing software), LibreOffice Writer (twenty documents), VLC Media Player (playing a movie), NPVR (tuned to a TV station with the sound muted) and FastStone Image Viewer (playing a slideshow with continuous loop). I didn’t stop any of my normal system programs that were running. Then I opened my Firefox Browser and started opening tabs from my bookmarks. After about 120 tabs, I started to notice the other programs slowing down. I didn’t check system resources because I knew that in real life I would never have this scenario.
Like almost everything electronic, there are a few downsides to this machine. Although there are a lot of USB ports, there isn’t a dedicated SD card reader. I was thinking of removing the 15-in-1 (4 slot) reader from my old desktop and installing on the new machine. I have found that I don’t really need it. Other than in my pocket computer, I just don’t use SD cards much anymore. My only other quibble is that the machine comes with Windows 10, but that is a whole other subject.
The first thing my Grandson said when he found out I bought an Alienware, was “can I get one for Christmas?” I told him he would have to talk to his Mother and Father about that. I think he’ll start saving his money. I did set up a guest account, so now I’ve got Steam, Epic Games and a few other things installed that I’ve never had before. I’ll probably set up a Steam account myself as there are a few games that do look interesting. I sure hope everyone that reads this article is as jealous as the Grandson was.
Thanks for reading.