PC Dreaming

[illusionofjoy]

On average I've been putting in applications for three to seven jobs per week. I dig through postings and if there is something I'm qualified for which pays my minimum salary requirement, I'll send in my resume and a cover letter. To date, no potential employers have realised that I could be doing incredible things for their business. Their loss...

I've already decided that once I do become employed again, assuming that the cash isn't too tight, I'm going to reward myself with a new computer. Granted, it's getting to the point where I actually need a new machine, but suffice it to say that circumstances force me to continue squeezing life out of the old XP build.

Here's the stuff:

Part	Brand & Model	Price*
Motherboard	Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3	$209.99
RAM	G. Skill 32GB F3-12800CL10Q-32GBZL	$324.99
CPU	Intel 3.4GHz Quad-core i7-2600k w/ fan BX80623I72600K	$319.99
Hard Drive	Corsair 180GB SSD CSSD-F180GB3-BK	$249.99
DVD/CD drive	Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS	$19.99
Video Card	Sapphire Radeon HD 6670 100326DDR3L	$79.99
Power Supply	Raidmax 630 Watt RX-630SS	$49.99
Case	Thermaltake V4 Black Edition ATX Mid-Tower VM30001W2Z	$49.99
Fans	Scythe 120x12mm slipstream case fan SY1212SL12H	$12.99 (qty.: 3)
Fans	Scythe 120x25mm slipstream case fan SY1225SL12SL	$13.99
Operating System	Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit FQC-04649	$139.99
Wifi Card	Asus PCE-N15	$27.99
Keyboard & Mouse	Logitech MK120	$20.99
Total:		$1,507.88
*as of Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 from newegg.com

Not much has changed since the last time I posted on this subject. The biggest change is that I've decided to eschew using a mechanical drive for my boot disc, opting for a newer solid state drive. While they are costly when measured by how much storage one gets per dollar, they are also quite a bit faster than the old style of hard drive. Since I'd only be using the thing to hold Windows 7 and whatever software I opted to install, a 2TB drive wasn't exactly necessary (especially as I'll be putting the XP machines two 1TB SATA drives into the new machine).

Not long ago I found an article on creating a dual boot XP installation. The reasoning behind this is that if one has two copies of XP installed, one can be the general purpose operating system while the other can be the clean, streamlined version dedicated to the digital audio workstation. Naturally, I think this is a good idea and I'd like to partition the SSD for a dual boot Windows 7 installation. In theory it shouldn't be much different in application than an XP dual boot, however if anyone has installed a Windows 7 dual boot, they've yet to write about it online. I've found plenty of tutorials on how to install Windows along side Linux or any numerous other operating systems. I'll probably just have to try it out myself and see what happens.