Well, the last time I upgraded my computer was for Doom 3. This time it's for Supreme Commander. Which, for me, is less an actual reason to upgrade and more a signal that it's time to upgrade because my poor three-year-old computer can't handle new games anymore. Considering I'd expected the machine to last only two years, I think it went quite well.

So I ended up replacing just about everything. All that's left of the old machine is the power supply and the DVD drive. The upgrade includes a Core 2 Duo E6600, a Geforce 8800 GTS and 2GB of DDR2 RAM. Well, I say 2GB -- in fact it wouldn't boot up at all for a while, and refused even to get to POST until I tried removing one of the RAM sticks. Seems it's faulty, so I'll have to send it back to get replaced.

The thing doesn't care, though. It's been a long time since I've had a computer that burns through modern games without breaking a sweat, so excuse me if I sound a little overenthusiastic. It's damn quiet, too. My previous computer you could hear humming away in the neighbouring room; with headphones on this machine is scarcely audible.

Paul will be happy to hear that I got Vista along with it. Home Premium 64-bit. So far, aside from a bizarre networking problem (which was actually the fault of the motherboard), I'm quite happy with it. It was painless to install, and it certainly looks pretty. I must admit, though, that
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Okay so I have had this computer for quite a while. I just upgraded to 4GB of RAM, which is cool I guess, but I must admit Paul I am rather disappointed in this operating system of yours! Ignoring the general fanciness factor and the stuff you actually need Vista for (DX10), the system is basically useless. I barely ever boot into it anymore, because it is oh so slightly slower than XP for gaming and that is just not on! Plus, business like Stalker runs like shit on it for no satisfactory reason.

The only real use I have for Vista at this point is for Supreme Commander, and even then it's only useful because I've got the 64-bit edition. If I had the 64-bit XP, that'd probably be better. Because for whatever reason there's some kinda hard limit with how much RAM things can use in 32-bit Windows and I am like whaaat but that is just how it is

I am not saying Vista sucks, because it is certainly spiffy, it is just that UAC is mostly annoying and fucks up sometimes when you want to install things. Oh, and there's basically no reason to use it for things that don't explicitly need it. So I'm not giving Vista the finger, here, I'm just sort of telling it that maybe we should start seeing other people.