Instead of turning in the machine, probably waiting a month or 2 for Fujitsu to hopefully repair it , I decided to put together a new computer for her. It’s basically a combination of the latest technology on the market and, honestly, totally overkill.  On the other hand, she deserves to finally work with a decent computer. Here are the specs:

• Case: Antec P183B
• Power Supply: Corsair HX520
• Motherboard: MSI X58 Pro-E
• Processor: Intel Core i7 920 2.6 GHz
• RAM: 3 x Corsair 2 Gb DDR3
• Storage: 2 TB in Raid 1
• Graphics: Nvidia Geforce  passive 9400GT

I made sure the computer operates silently enough as it’s one of the few things my mother actually cares about, something I totally agree on by the way. My father didn’t want me to replace the existing fans with even more silent ones though, but the current ones are  silent nonetheless.

I never thought it would happen, but the new computer was initally having some small annoyances: random crashes and reboots. Wait, wasn’t that how this story all started in the first place? It turned out that automatic overclocking of the computer is turned on in bios by default. I can’t even imagine why manufacturers would enable such a feature that can cause instability, let alone on a entry-level motherboard. Anyway, after disabling the automatic overclocking, the computer works like a charm.

Unfortunately, the computer is running Windows Vista 64bit. It’s something I will have to live with for now. My mother’s job requires working with Windows-only software and no, I won’t try wine. Wine beats the whole purpose of using linux after all (not that I would want to trash wine, it’s a fine piece of software). I wouldn’t want to convert my mother to linux in the first place, let’s just say linux is not suited for her. On the other hand it is nice to finally work with a computer that can actually run Vista smoothly. My vista dislikes remain though, except for the slowness factor (on this machine that is).

While I’m at it, I couldn’t resist putting in some linux live cds to see how this new computer behaved in the world of linux. A linux install is out of the question. Not only because of the reasons mentioned above, but also because otherwise I probably wouldn’t even hand out this computer to my mother anymore. If you didn’t get it by now, yes I’m jealous.  The 2 live cds I currently have at my disposal are Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty and Arch Linux 2009.01. Both are 32 bit versions. As expected, both ran just fine. No errors and every device detected, as I anticipated. For the ones interested, you can find the dmesg file here. I also didn’t experience any problem with fans ramping up to their maximum as some linux users have reported for the Intel i7 platform (socket 1366).

Now let’s hope this computer will last a little longer than my mother’s previous computer. If it’s any reference, the last computer I have put together and also my main desktop is still running after 5 years of hard work.

There’s only one other thing worth mentioning. I recently upgraded my laptop to alsa 1.0.20 and it’s a major improvevent over the previous version. The driver snd-hda-intel now provides a much better sound quality and volume can go louder (note that I make a clear distinction between sound quality and volume as the latter certainly doesn’t imply the first, uncorrelated you might say). The sound volume coming out of the laptop was pretty low in the earlier versions but it improved a lot with 1.0.20. Sound quality is of course subjective, but, I can tell you, I have a good ear for it.

I remember from my earlier usage of Vista that I’m better off with a clean install on my Sony Vaio SZ6. Laptop manufacturers like Sony simply put too much bloat on their pre-installed Vista installations. I really don’t need all this trial software: office, antivirus software, … It’s all there slowing down the performance and it’s even harder to remove. The installation itself went very well. Barely any user input is required to complete the installation. The only thing I noticed is that I couldn’t find a hard disk partinioner. Odd, but not that much of a big deal either.

While the installation of Vista itself was a breeze (credit where credit’s due), installing the Sony drivers was far from easy. Sony uses a lot of custom drivers for their laptops which can be downloaded from their site. First you have to figure out in what order they have to be installed in order to make everything work like it’s supposed to (Sony neglects to mention that). When you finally figured it out, you can start searching for the devices they belong too. Then I ask myself why people complain about a linux installation. Granted, when Vista is already configured by the manufacturer it’s not much of a hassle, but doing it yourself requires much more knowledge than the average user has.

Next is the update process. Is it just me or does downloading and installing all the updates take forever? Note the retorical aspect of this question. Maybe I’m spoiled because of the fast linux mirrors, but there’s no excuse for the time it takes on Vista. Then you have the renowned restarting of the updates, famous only in the realm of Microsoft. I’m already over the fact that I have to restart, but certainly not over the fact that it takes forever to complete the installation of the updates.

The first day I was using Vista again, I wasn’t happy at all. It felt very slow and there was this enormous unknown disk activity. I later found out it was just indexing my files, looking for updates, defragmenting my disk (why is that even necessary right after a clean install?), … but I really don’t like things happening without me knowing of it. Luckily the slowness and disk activity went away shortly thereafter. It’s almost as if Vista heavily relies on caching to achieve some speed. Not that I mind though, that’s what system resources are for.

Vista has some good qualities as well though. The User Acces Control for instance is a major step ahead. Ironically, that’s what regular Vista users complain most about. The Microsoft developers might have to reprioritize their UAC focus (why would I need admin privileges to drag, drop and delete items in my very own start menu?) but all in all UAC really is a good thing.

Something linux lacks and Vista doesn’t, is the support of every manufacter on this globe. You never have to wonder if this will work, because it will (well, maybe not on vista 64 bit :p). There’s also no lack of good software. It’s not always free as in beer or speech, but it’s certainly good. Microsoft Office for example really outperforms Openoffice or any other office suit on linux.

In the end, Vista doesn’t make me go away from Arch Linux but I’ll still use it once in a while because it’s not that bad after all.