June 11, 2005

Fedora Core 4 is on it’s way and should hit the internet-at-large Monday, assuming someone over at RedHat doesn’t sneak the ISO out tonight or tomorrow. This is wonderful, because by the time I download it and burn it to DVD, I will have my new hard drive, assuming Newegg’s shipping is as fast as it usually is. (Time out for an advertisement - Newegg has hands down the best service I’ve found online. When I worked in Philly and ordered parts, they’d come from across the river in Edison, NJ - I’d pay for the basic 7-day shipping and have the part the next day. When I ordered a DVD burner with 3-4 day shipping, I got it on the 4th day; the amazing thing was it was shipped from Chicago that morning. In order to make it on time, they same-day shipped it to me at their expense. Wow!) Anyway, yeah there are school bills and whatnot, but I earmarked the gift money from my graduation for component upgrades. Since I assembled my computer last year, I’ve upgraded the sound card, speakers, NIC (after the on-board one died), and added a DVD burner. This round of upgrades is the last of the “to upgrade first chance I get” list. One stick of Kingston ValueRam - 1gb pc2700 - and one 200gb hard drive for data backup and Linux purposes. I expect to have the parts by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest, then it’s bye-bye Microsoft for me. I’d say it’s been fun, but it really hasn’t. My system specs will now read:

AMD Athlon XP+ 2800
1.5gb ram (1×1gb + 2×256mb)
320gb HDD space (1 Maxtor 120gb IDE and 1 WD 200gb SATA)
Creative SB Live! 5.1 sound card
GeForce 4 TI 4200 video card
52x CD-RW
16X DVD+/-RW
Zip250 (why? Because it was only $3 at an IT yard sale and I had the room, not to mention the money went to Bible Conference)
Logitech Z640 speakers

Next on the “because everyone else has it and I don’t” upgrade list is a DVD+/-RW that can burn dual-layer media (which is sinfully expensive at the moment, which is why I didn’t buy one earlier) and a Firewire card, since my mobo doesn’t support onboard firewire. In a few years I’ll want to swap the mobo and chip out for an Athlon XP+ 3200 or whatever is the best chip I can get for a good price at the time.

All that to say, Fedora Core 4 is due out this week, and I’ll be installing it as soon as I get my hands on it (and my new drive) and let you out there in Readerland know how it went.