Speeding up my computers
In an effort to speed up my Windows XP machine and stave off the urge to buy a new computer - I'm re-installing Windows XP. I've installed and re-installed Windows quite a bit in my lifetime, but this time I'm doing it different. Rather than risking my data, I bought a new hard drive. Can you believe that the smallest hard drive you can buy these days is 30 GB?! Everything installed easy enough and the machine (1.5 GHz, 1 GB RAM) is much faster, now I'm only going to install the apps I actually use. This means that I'll install them only as I need them. Hopefully this will result in a leaner, meaner machine.
I am strongly considering a new G5, but I need a new (better paying) contract to justify that. And if I do get this $6000 dream machine (23" monitor, 1 GB RAM), it won't be a replacement for my Windows machine - it'll just be a new primary machine. I don't want to have to buy Quicken or Quickbooks for the Mac, it's much easier to just keep the old machine around.
As I write this, I'm on my second attempt at installing XP. The first attempt worked fine, but for some reason - the new hard drive was given a drive letter of F. Maybe it got confused with the new slave drive. So I'm in the midst of a 2nd attempt, this time w/o the slave drive connected. Wish me luck.