My first impressions when my new workstation was delivered: “Hmm… how am I going to fit TWO of these monitors on my desk?” Each monitor box was about 30″ long.
The Samsung 226BW is a very classy monitor. Very nice chassis, fashionable polished metal buttons, cool blue lights, and that delightful glossy coating that gives colours and text such a vibrant life. They fit quite comfortably on my (cleared) desk. I had to tilt them in a slight V-formation, though, to keep them inside the desk edge – also, they fit in my field of vision otherwise.
Assembling the computer was the same usual process, but for some reason it made me… content. Not exactly happy or giddy. I think at some level I was hearkening back to the childhood days of Lego(TM).
Oh, and just as I did when I was child, I broke the motherboard while trying to remove the CPU heat sink. Snapped the plastic right off with excessive force, a mistake that renders an entire computer irrecoverably useless. Fortunately, this was on my old computer, which was already useless from a short somewhere. It’s also good to know that I’m as stupid now as I was then.
The Antec Sonata III case is a pleasure to work with, and beautifully black with blue beads of light to boot. I remember being impressed with the first Antec case I bought. “Removable hard drive mounts!” “Metal edges that don’t cut me like a vicious papercut!” How wondrous it was then. This time it was, “Drive mounts that face the opening instead of the back!”, “Silicone grommets to reduce vibration noise!”, and “Extra large fans to reduce whirr!”. Combined with my smart motherboard, which reduces the power supplied to fans when the box is cool, this workstation is much, much quieter than my last.
After fussing around with internal cables, clearing some space, and fussing with external cables, comes installing an OS. I went for the 64-bit version of Ubuntu Linux. Skipping the play-by-play, my 64-bit related experiences:
- The amd64 image for Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) won’t boot on its own if one is using an NVidia GeForce 8800 video card. One must edit the boot options and set
splashtonosplash. - 64-bit Linux “feels” faster than 32-bit Linux; at least, for simple operations like installing software. Possibly my imagination.
- NVidia supports Linux better than ATI. Installation process is about the same for both, but nVidia’s autoconfiguration tool to generate `xorg.conf` files works much better than ATI’s. Also, a lot less hassle about mutually exclusive parameters, or certain settings resulting in display failure. The display failure might be an unfair comparison, though, since I am comparing Linux support for the 5 year old Radeon 9800 Pro, to the months-old Geforce 8800.
- Support for Java applets in a 64-bit browser is terrible. Some people have had success with
IcedTeaplugin, but not I. - Never got Flash support in a 64-bit browser either, but the workaround, using the
ff32-3in1script to install a 32-bit browser works alright. - Compiz Fusion, the set of 3D desktop graphics effects, is fun, but surprisingly, some of those effects are actually useful. Witness the Zoom Desktop.
- Couldn’t get Adobe Acrobat Reader to work, but I think it’s because I didn’t try hard enough.
xpdfis fine for now. - Had trouble getting VMWare Server (1.0.5) to work. Didn’t like some of the 64-bit libraries – or dependency on 32-bit ones? Eventually got it up by applying the
vmware-any-any-update115tarball update, as well as installing+referencing some 32-bit libraries.
It’s all running pretty smoothly now, though.
I can’t directly observe the benefits of the video card (upcoming Starcraft 2 will be the first major video game I’ve played in awhile), except to say that finding a video card that had two DVI output ports (intead of one DVI, and one VGA w/ DVI converter) is completely worth the crispness and lack of colour adjustments. My old workstation worked with VGA connectors, and I can say with certainty that VGA connectors do not do justice to LCD monitor.
I’m sure the fast and bountiful memory also contributes to my vastly improved computing experience, but I’d never notice it directly. It’s comforting to have more than most, though, and to know that, despite the race to ever more bloated software, I’ll be one step ahead! 
The best part is easily the higher resolution and larger monitors. The desktop is now so wiiiiide.
As a final commentary for my upgrade story, some comparisons to illustrate what a difference four years makes:
| Pentium 4 2.80GHz HyperThreading | Xeon 3110 3.0GHz Dual Core | 3 times faster, according to Tom’s Hardware |
| 3GB DDR-400 | 4GB DDR2-800 | 33% more memory, 4 times as fast (can I get this for my brain?) |
| ATI Radeon 9800 Pro | nVidia GeForce 8800 GT | At least 10 times faster; the Radeon is too old to appear in the video card charts, but the slowest card there is still faster than the Radeon! |
| 2x150GB PATA disks | 2x500GB SATA disks | 3 times the capacity, a smidgen faster. |
| Two 19″ 4:3 LCD @25ms 1280×1024 | Two 22″ 16:9 LCD @2MS 1680×1050 glossy | Now 30% more screen, sharper than a pin, and a possible substitute for sunlight. |
| Antec 1080 | Antec Sonata III | Skin from beige to black, lights from hot red to cool blue, surfaces smoothed out; and the insides… even smarter!! |
| C$2200 | C$1600 | Speaks for itself. Cheaper, faster, better: choose three. |
