One thing I haven’t figured out yet with my new Dell 490 system running Windows Server 2008 is how to burn a CD. I have a LITE-ON DVD RW in it–the same drive that was in my old Windows XP system–but for some reason Windows Server reports it as a DVD-ROM. This one has me stumped, but I don’t have the time to really track it down. Although I am getting tired of going to some other machine for burning CDs.
Several years ago I bought a Shuttle SK41G computer that served me quite well, first as a Linux test machine, then as a development platform, and finally as a small DNS server. About a year ago it lost its mind. I thought the problem was the battery for the CMOS RAM, but after replacing the battery the machine still loses the time whenever I shut it off. I hate to throw out a perfectly good (if somewhat aging) computer, but have a hard time justifying the time I’d spend puzzling this out.
I’ve been considering buying a clone of my Dell Latitude D610 laptop. Dell doesn’t sell that machine anymore, but they’re plentiful on eBay: at about $400 for a fully loaded machine, shipping included. That’s about 20% of the new price from three years ago. It’s a very serviceable machine, with a 2 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, hard drives from 30 to 160 GB, and a nice display that’ll do 1400×1050 pixels. The only possible drawback is that it’s a single core 32-bit processor.
Dual core laptops are pretty resonable. You can pick up a new Dell Inspiron 1525 on eBay for $500 or $600. For $700, you can get one fully loaded with lots of RAM and a big hard drive. I wonder about battery life, though. Can I get five hours out of it with the optional battery in the expansion bay? And honestly: do I really need multiple cores in a laptop?
