[clue-tech] Need new hardware (was two monitors)

[erik at ezolan.com]

> Current client has provided me with a thinkpad T30.  Piece of junk, nice
> box, but has been dropped on it's head once or twice too many times, the
> USB
> ports drop a lot.  Otherwise it does the job.  Still, I've got 3 19"
> monitors spread all over the home office, I don't really need the dual
> head
> or care to pay for the power and deal with the extra radiation (I'm half
> blind already).  I have to play windows to make nice with everybody else -
> but do the real work on a dinky linux box in back (cygwin and ssh).
>
> So now comes the question:
>
> I need something with a little more oomph in the Linux department.  I do a
> lot of database work, I'm self-employed (i.e. not a lot of excess cash).
> At
> least 4 disks and 2GB of RAM.  I've got my eye on a Dell PowerEdge 830 for
> about $900 (P4 2.8Ghz - single core, 2GB, 1 160GB SATA drive (I'd plug in
> three more I have here)).  What would the group look at in my shoes?
>
> (The 4 disks is to spread the load across spindles.
>  I am currently using a P3 with 700MB of RAM and three disks.
>  CPU is 90% idle.  Disk and Memory are bottlenecks)

I'm not sure about getting a Dell as your main, incoming producing PC. If
nothing bad happens, great. But if something does, and it stops working,
you'll be on the phone for 5 hour convincing them that they need to fix
it.

For the technically minded, building your own PC is *easy*. And if
something happens, and you need it to get fixed *right now*, you can run
over to Compusa and pick up the part you need.

If it's your income producing PC, all problems need to be fixed *right
now*, and warranties on parts are far easier to invoke than warranties on
whole machines.

Now, it's possible to go buy a corp-made machine that's reliable and has a
responsive warranty service. But not on a budget.

(Goes off and sees how much it would cost to build a good DB server)

Erik Z