Davidh373
Platinum Member
I know this is a troubleshooting forum, but I thought it would be good to see a success story. I thought maybe some of us could give a brief build history to show how we improved over the years, and also to tell you my fantastic story of course 😛.
So it's been about 2 years now and my future mindedness and tech savoy is finally getting true recognition. 2 years ago I watched my friends build my first computer. Since then I've spent some money where I certainly shouldn't have, but over all I think I've done a pretty good job all and all 🙂.
Yesterday and the day before were amazing. I got new computer parts for an i5 gaming system, my mom got a laptop, and my dad got a hand-me-down computer in his office. This was a digital Christmas if you've ever seen one 🙂. I spent all day on Christmas getting all the bloat off my Mom's laptop, Building my computer, and removing the newer 9800GTX from the hand-me-down HP and reinstalling the old 7300GT both for energy efficiency and it needed a wifi card where the heatsink for the 9800 resided. I managed all this while celebrating with family,and them kinda smirking at my small mistakes here and there. "Yanking my chain" about us having FAR too many computers in the house to know what to do with and all that.
Where this all came together was in the next day, when my Dad and Mom got all the freeware and drivers and networking installed (Still by me of course). I granted them network access to the printer, and my server full of music and movies. I taught them how to get to hulu, and that they could watch that when TV was "crap". For a while my parents were skeptical about all the money and things going into things like the server, and media center computers, but I feel like they finally have a grasp on "my world" now that they are involved in it. They see huge convenience in it and that having a $300 box that does everything 10 boxes that would cost $800 separately would do might actually save money in initial purchase, energy, and get rid of the generic pile o' controllers and wires that come along with getting 10 different boxes.
Before this Christmas our setup was pretty disgusting. My dad had only a work laptop which constantly had issues with the HP driver for the wireless printer, my Mom had nothing to even browse the internet with, and my old Core 2 Duo HP was just sitting in a desk next to my workstation. The only things really capable of accessing my home server was my workstation and my now broken laptop. Now it actually has a purpose beyond my uses I guess.
My point is, that my 2 years of hard work setting up a beefy network and knowledge base finally paid off for someone aside from myself, and I can actually see that every day now. Many people reading this have probably helped me a great deal over those years, and I'd like to thank them now.
Here is a list of the computers in the house. Some are temporarily broken, but will hopefully be repaired soon.
First family computer, purchased 1998 (I think...)
- Dell, PIII, 40GB HDD, 768MB RAM (originally 256MB), XP Pro
+Now located in closet next to printer. Expected broken HDD, but otherwise in working order.
First personal computer, purchased Christmas 2005
- HP M7680n, Core 2 Duo, 2 x 250GB HDDs, 2GB RAM, Geforce 7300GT 256MB, XP MCE.
+ Now re-purposed to be my Dad's Office computer, was upgraded to 9800 GTX 512MB but now has the 7300GT once more.
First laptop, Purchased Christmas 2007
- MacBook Pro Santa Rosa, Core 2 Duo, 200GB HDD, 2GB RAM, Geforce 8600m 256MB, Mac OS X 10.5/ Windows 7 Pro
+ It has no video, but I am about to claim benefits from a class action suit to get the logic board replaced.
First true custom build (Workstation), Purchased end of fall 2009
- Custom, i7 920, 150GB 10k, 2 x 1TB HDDs, 6GB RAM, Radeon 4890 1GB, Windows 7 Pro
+ Still used to this day for my 3D modeling and rendering, upgraded to a GTX 470.
Second laptop, Mom, Purchased Christmas 2010
- Acer Aspire, i5 430m, 500GB HDD, 4GB RAM, Intel HD GPU, Windows 7 Home Premium
+ Currently in living room
Second custom build (Gaming), Purchased Christmas 2010
- Custom, i5 760, 1TB HDD, 4GB RAM, 9800 GTX 512MB, Windows 7 Home Premium
+ Currently in bedroom
Networking devices
Belkin wireless G
+at friend's house
Netgear Dual band G/N
+ plugged into Modem
Apple Time Capsule, Purchased Summer 2008
+HDD is broken, but is in my room providing wireless to my gaming build and wireless to my Father's HP.
Custom Home Server, Purchased Fall 2009 (yeah... that's longer than the Time Capsule lasted)
- Custom, sempron 140, 1.5TB HDD, 1GB RAM, Radeon 4200, FreeNAS
+ Currently providing media streaming
Planned repairs/upgrades
1. SSD for Workstation
2. 6850 for gaming build
3. 12GB RAM for Workstation
4. Replacement HDD for Dell
5. OS, RAM, and GPU for Home server to media center conversion.
6. 2GB RAM for HP
Thanks to anyone who made it through all that lol. It was fun to type 🙂.
So it's been about 2 years now and my future mindedness and tech savoy is finally getting true recognition. 2 years ago I watched my friends build my first computer. Since then I've spent some money where I certainly shouldn't have, but over all I think I've done a pretty good job all and all 🙂.
Yesterday and the day before were amazing. I got new computer parts for an i5 gaming system, my mom got a laptop, and my dad got a hand-me-down computer in his office. This was a digital Christmas if you've ever seen one 🙂. I spent all day on Christmas getting all the bloat off my Mom's laptop, Building my computer, and removing the newer 9800GTX from the hand-me-down HP and reinstalling the old 7300GT both for energy efficiency and it needed a wifi card where the heatsink for the 9800 resided. I managed all this while celebrating with family,and them kinda smirking at my small mistakes here and there. "Yanking my chain" about us having FAR too many computers in the house to know what to do with and all that.
Where this all came together was in the next day, when my Dad and Mom got all the freeware and drivers and networking installed (Still by me of course). I granted them network access to the printer, and my server full of music and movies. I taught them how to get to hulu, and that they could watch that when TV was "crap". For a while my parents were skeptical about all the money and things going into things like the server, and media center computers, but I feel like they finally have a grasp on "my world" now that they are involved in it. They see huge convenience in it and that having a $300 box that does everything 10 boxes that would cost $800 separately would do might actually save money in initial purchase, energy, and get rid of the generic pile o' controllers and wires that come along with getting 10 different boxes.
Before this Christmas our setup was pretty disgusting. My dad had only a work laptop which constantly had issues with the HP driver for the wireless printer, my Mom had nothing to even browse the internet with, and my old Core 2 Duo HP was just sitting in a desk next to my workstation. The only things really capable of accessing my home server was my workstation and my now broken laptop. Now it actually has a purpose beyond my uses I guess.
My point is, that my 2 years of hard work setting up a beefy network and knowledge base finally paid off for someone aside from myself, and I can actually see that every day now. Many people reading this have probably helped me a great deal over those years, and I'd like to thank them now.
Here is a list of the computers in the house. Some are temporarily broken, but will hopefully be repaired soon.
First family computer, purchased 1998 (I think...)
- Dell, PIII, 40GB HDD, 768MB RAM (originally 256MB), XP Pro
+Now located in closet next to printer. Expected broken HDD, but otherwise in working order.
First personal computer, purchased Christmas 2005
- HP M7680n, Core 2 Duo, 2 x 250GB HDDs, 2GB RAM, Geforce 7300GT 256MB, XP MCE.
+ Now re-purposed to be my Dad's Office computer, was upgraded to 9800 GTX 512MB but now has the 7300GT once more.
First laptop, Purchased Christmas 2007
- MacBook Pro Santa Rosa, Core 2 Duo, 200GB HDD, 2GB RAM, Geforce 8600m 256MB, Mac OS X 10.5/ Windows 7 Pro
+ It has no video, but I am about to claim benefits from a class action suit to get the logic board replaced.
First true custom build (Workstation), Purchased end of fall 2009
- Custom, i7 920, 150GB 10k, 2 x 1TB HDDs, 6GB RAM, Radeon 4890 1GB, Windows 7 Pro
+ Still used to this day for my 3D modeling and rendering, upgraded to a GTX 470.
Second laptop, Mom, Purchased Christmas 2010
- Acer Aspire, i5 430m, 500GB HDD, 4GB RAM, Intel HD GPU, Windows 7 Home Premium
+ Currently in living room
Second custom build (Gaming), Purchased Christmas 2010
- Custom, i5 760, 1TB HDD, 4GB RAM, 9800 GTX 512MB, Windows 7 Home Premium
+ Currently in bedroom
Networking devices
Belkin wireless G
+at friend's house
Netgear Dual band G/N
+ plugged into Modem
Apple Time Capsule, Purchased Summer 2008
+HDD is broken, but is in my room providing wireless to my gaming build and wireless to my Father's HP.
Custom Home Server, Purchased Fall 2009 (yeah... that's longer than the Time Capsule lasted)
- Custom, sempron 140, 1.5TB HDD, 1GB RAM, Radeon 4200, FreeNAS
+ Currently providing media streaming
Planned repairs/upgrades
1. SSD for Workstation
2. 6850 for gaming build
3. 12GB RAM for Workstation
4. Replacement HDD for Dell
5. OS, RAM, and GPU for Home server to media center conversion.
6. 2GB RAM for HP
Thanks to anyone who made it through all that lol. It was fun to type 🙂.
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