New Desktop!

I'm thankful that my previous desktop showed signs of senescence, so that I could have taken the necessary precautions before it died. Yep, it died this morning, after refusing to start-up for the dozens of times that I tried. A surgery revived it for a fleeting moment, giving me ample time to send a document that I had typed yesterday to my Gmail for safe-keeping. It has served me well over the years... from 28th August 2003 till now, with quite a few upgrades.

It was a hectic afternoon... savaging whatever I could from the dead system (actually I think it's just a faulty PSU, but I can't be bothered to waste time figuring out what the exact problem is, so I pronounced my desktop PC dead). Well, the motherboard still looked very new... quite a waste :/ After saving what I could and cleaning up the place, it was time to visit Sim Lim Square.

After three hours at Sim Lim Square and feeling a little grouchy over the service that was rendered, I was back home with the new system, clean... without any software installed (75% of the time was spent waiting... waiting for my turn to be served, waiting for the system to be assembled etc). Total damage... SGD1395.

Here's a breakdown of what's re-used and what's new in the new system:

Re-used:
- Samsung CDRW
- LG DVDRW
- WinTV card
- Maxtor 160GB SATA II HDD (now used as secondary HDD)

New:
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz
- Asus P5K-SE P35 Motherboard
- 02 x Kingston 5300/667 DDR2 1GB
- WD Caviar 320GB SATA II HDD
- Leadtek PX8800GT 512MB GDDR3 PCI-E
- Cooler Master Centurion 5 Casing
- Cooler Master 450W Real Power PSU
- Microsoft Windows XP Home OEM

It took about 1.5 hours to just format the new harddisk and about an hour to install all the basic software (drivers, anti-virus, firefox, thunderbird, etc). Will now have to spend a little more time installing other useful software.

Had initially planned to get some work done if not for the death of my desktop PC. Will now have to work through the night. Lalala...