TSML death & buying computers 2004-06-18 - By Ron Hodges
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Another long time lurker here - I post very rarely, only when I have something
that might be helpful. Thanks to all who post regularly and volunteer their
knowledge. I've gotten far more out of the TSML than I've contributed. Sorry
'bout that but I'm not a big tS user, mostly due to time constraints and the
demands of a full-time non-graphics related job.
Regarding system purchases, I am now on my third box from Dell over the past 9
years or so. All three are still running great (but the older ones are way
slow). The newest one is the big blue XPS box, P4 3.0ghz with an ATI Radeon
9600 Pro card. I use it for video editing and DVD production and it rocks!
Besides HP & Compaq, Dell also uses proprietary components. Compaq is the
worst in this matter. With Dell, the one big got-ya is that the power supply
and it's connection to the motherboard are non-standard. You won't be able to
put in a different motherboard easily or run down to the store for a quicky
power-supply upgrade. Other than that, practically everthing else is off-the
-shelf stuff.
The ATI card is OK, but I'm not a big ATI fan. The main reason is their
tendency to "orphan" their older cards. Once a new card is out, no more
patches/updates for drivers on the older cards. It's been that way for years.
If the drivers are good out of the box, it's no problem. So just a caution on
ATI.
How to improve TSML? A couple big thing would help those of us who get the
digest version: 1) Don't send your posts in HTML, and 2) Don't include long
copies of reply threads, especially just to say "me too!". There was a digest
a while back with exactly 5 lines of new message text and several HUNDRED lines
of HTML junk and copied threads. Complaint mode is now off...
Thanks to all for their input and continued support of the TSML. Summer is
always slow so don't panic!
Ron H.
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