My Computer's Allergic to Windows!

One of my data recovery/malware removal machines had started behaving pretty erratically, so I opened it up and Lo! it had a couple of leaky capacitors. No big surprise; it's an Anthlon XP 2400+ on a Jetway V400 mainboard. Not like I can complain about the 6 years I've used it.

Still, I decided to try a clean install of XP and see if I could nurse it along a while. Of course the installation failed to complete, so I set it aside for salvage. A few nights later while I was really bored, restless, and inspired by Bateman's XXXB Ale, I decided I'd install Jaunty Jackalope on it. Not only did it install, but I ran the machine and played with the new version of Ubuntu for over 3 weeks without a hiccup. In fact, I got so cocky I thought I'd try to put it back in service for recovery/malware scans. And, of course, the Windows installation failed yet again.

Just proves that ubuntu doesn't use the whole machine :D

I have nursed a leaky capacitor machine with Win98 on it for about 4 years before it finally gave up the ghost.

The secondary computer in the house is showing it's age. I was tempted to see if Jaunty Jackalope would reload on my problem child, then give it to the kids. The deal breaker was that it wouldn't have run their core applications: WoW, Chuzzle, Sims 2, Cake Mania, etc. Ended up using the very nice Enlight case that the machine was in as a housing for an Athlon x2 5200+, a Foxconn mainboard, and a new power supply and took the spare kid machine for removal & recovery.

kinda over the top for chuzzle? But I do like that game!

Well, $103 for CPU plus mainboard, $30 for the PSU, and $15 for 1GB DDR2. I dusted off an Action Pack copy of XP Pro, and recycled the hard drive and DVD burner from the old recovery machine. Both of them are only a year old. So, for $150, I don't have to listen to "Daddy, this computer is slow!" for another year or two.

Chuzzle plays very nicely with Win7 :)

Actually, I had some older versions of Bejeweled 2, Bookworm, and some others that really didn't want to run on Vista until I purchased newer versions. Rather than potentially cough up a couple of hundred bucks or better for newer versions of games that my wife and I aren't going to play, I just took the path of least resistance.

I also scuttled my plan to use an Athlon 5200+. The vendor I used was out of stock (so much for real-time inventory) and they shipped me a 7750 Blackbox instead for the same price. I don't expect many complaints about this machine for a long time.

Win7 has an xp virtual machine....

My doctor said I have a leaky capacitor, or something like that.

I just quit drinking beer and switched to wine and things that bind.


I also have a well preserved Dell with Win98 SE and a FAST AS LIGHTNING 866 that still runs well. The son uses it for te internetz.

Some games I have are Classic and may one day go to the grandson (considering the present options are getting more violent and crude all the time).


Too bad Myst died out.