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Old 3rd July 2008
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Oko Oko is offline
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: Kosovo, Serbia
Posts: 1,102
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I love to put together my own computers and the one I am typing from is built by my own hands. That being said building a computer is only cost effective if you are building powerful workstation. There is no way that I can bit the WalMart prices on
individual low end machines used for Web surfing, email, and document processing. There is no way that you can bit the DeLL on the low level servers (I do not like Proliants) or when you have to deploy 10s of desktops.

If you like me have lots of used older machines (including laptops) the hardware tinkering is a MUST. There is so much (almost free) older commodity hardware in U. S. these days but finding the one that just work is a miracle. Most often one I need at least two-three older desktops in order put one which is perfect working order. The same goes for laptops and I am not shy of playing with laptop hardware too. Servers are another story and they can often be found in pristine condition. However even in the case of servers always helps if you have at hand some extra RAM and SCSI drives. I also usually have tens of network cards at my hand too.

Getting the older non-Intel hardware to work is even more challenging and often Ebay
is the only place where one can find the missing components. I do not like MAC hardware so I am talking mostly about SUN hardware (OK I like SGI hardware but that is like treasure hunting).

Once I mastered the skill of playing with the older hardware I came to realization that I can get any kind of computer almost free. My ThinkPad A20p was paid $20 (was missing CMOS battery). All PIII that I have are paid no more than $5. My former
Tauting U10 (SUN's clone) station was paid $40. I had PowerEdge 2500 server PIII 2x 1.2 Xeon with 6 x18 GB SCSI hard drivers bought for $90. Netra SUN servers are less than $100 on Ebay. The list goes on and on. The DeLL Optiplex P4 with 512 MB or RAM and 3x10GB of hard drives that is my second desktop machine is paid $50. (with the parts I put
it cost no more than $80 and I added DVD-RW, 256MB RAM, two hard drives and a ZIP drive).

Best,
OKO

P.S. The one that I am writing from is Intel Core 2 Duo with 3GB of RAM, DVD-RW and 160GB SATA hard drive. Its cost
to build was $450 about 15 months ago. I think that is slightly less that one has to pay for it in the stores these days
but the one in the store probably comes with 19" LCD monitor and that pleasure would cost me an extra $200. My solution was to use old DeLL CRT monitor which I got for free. So sure. I have saved money and I had cutting edge hardware last year BUT.

Last edited by Oko; 4th July 2008 at 12:37 AM.
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