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by
Joe - jgand@pcfootball.net
4/10/04
Well, it’s been a couple of
months since BigDaddy pulled up stakes and moved his brood to
the Treasure Valley. I’ve got to tell you all, I think I made
the right decision. Everything is so much better up here, there’s
no smog, less traffic, and everyone that we have met has been
really cool.
It also seems like we are not the
only SoCal natives to come up here. It almost seems that every
other person we meet here has come from SoCal or they know
someone who has. You know how some people refer to Long Beach as
"Iowa West" because there are so many people from Iowa
who now live there? Well I guess we can refer to Boise as "SoCal
North" from now on.
In any case, that is not what
this column is about. This column is going to be about my brand
new toy that I got delivered almost a month ago. I am referring
to my brand-spankin new Alienware Area-51 computer.
A few months ago our other
computer had to go into the shop when we couldn’t get MSWord
to open. That meant that wifey had to use our backup computer so
that she could conduct business on eBay. Well our backup at that
time was a Pentium II computer that only ran at 233mHz, as
opposed to the Pentium IV that ran at 1.5gHz. Needless to say
that older rig ran much slower, and it was driving Molly crazy.
It took her hours to do on the PII what took her maybe 45
minutes to do on the P IV. She was getting more and more
frustrated with the process and at one point she looked me
straight in the eye and said: "OK, OK, you can get whatever
computer you want to use as a backup. I don’t care about the
cost anymore, I just can’t stand this! You can have whatever
you want!"
Later when we had sold our house
in California and we had the money in the bank I took her up on
that offer. I went to the Alienware website and customized my
new rig. For those of you who don’t know already, here were
the specs I put in:
1] Area-51™
Warranty: 3-Year AlienCare Toll-Free 24/7 Phone Support
with Onsite Service
Case: Alienware Full-Tower Case (420-Watt PS) - Plasma
Purple
Processor: Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor with HT
Technology 3.0GHz 800MHz FSB 512KB Cache
Motherboard: Intel® Desktop Board D875PBZ - Intel 875P
Motherboard
Memory: 2GB DDR SDRAM PC-3200 - 4 x 512MB Module
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce™ FX 5700 Ultra 128MB 8x AGP
w/DVI & S-Video
Video Cooling: AlienIce™ Video Cooling System - Astral
Blue
System Drive: 120GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Serial ATA
7,200 RPM 8MB Cache
Storage Drive: 80GB Seagate Barracuda Serial ATA 7,200
RPM 8MB Cache
Storage Controller: SIIG Dual-Channel Serial ATA PCI
Controller
Optical Drive One: 16x DVD-ROM - Black w/Software MPEG-2
Decoder
Optical Drive Two: Lite-On 52x32x52x CD-RW - Black
Floppy Drive: 3.5" 1.44 MB Floppy Disk Drive - Black
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster® Audigy 2 ZS - 7.1
Network Card: Integrated Intel Pro/1000 CT Gigabit
Ethernet Adapter w/CSA
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard - Plasma Purple
Mouse: Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0 - USB - Plasma
Purple
USB Lighted Cables: 15' USB 2.0 Cable with Blue LEDs
Games: Halo: Combat Evolved
Productivity Software: Microsoft Office 2003 Professional
Edition
Security Software: Norton AntiVirus™ 2004 Professional
Edition
Performance Optimizer: AlienAdrenaline: Video Performance
Optimizer
Free Alienware T-Shirt: Free Alienware® T-Shirt - Black
Automated Support: AlienAutopsy: Automated Technical
Support Request System
[1] Alienware Systems Promotion; Free Shipping
SubTotal: $3,128.00
Shipping: $104.00
Discount: $99.00
Tax: .00
Order Total: $3,133.00
Now some of you may have noticed
that a few things are missing from my order. You may have
noticed that I did not order a monitor nor a set of speakers to
go with my new toy. Well I had those areas covered already
because I had planned to use some equipment that I had already
with the new rig. Since the video card had an S-Video
output, I planned on plugging it into my 27" TV in the
family room and using that for the monitor. Then I would plug
the sound card into our sterio receiver so that I could get 5.1
sound at least. So I was all set, and all I had to do was wait
for FedEx to deliver my new computer.
Well, It took a little longer
than I had expected. I thought that the computer would be
delivered soon after we had arrived in Boise, but that wasn’t
the case. It took a lot longer to get the parts, inspect them,
assemble the computer and have it tested than I had thought. So
I wound up finally receiving it at the end of January, right
around Super Bowl time.
Getting it out of the box that it
came in was an adventure in itself. Alienware ships their
computers in these  gargantuan
black boxes that remind you of the monolith in "2001".
This probably explains why I could swear I heard "Also
Spach Zarathustra" in the background somewhere. To get the
computer out of this monolith I had to turn it on its side, and
open up the bottom of the box so that I could just pull the box
off from the top.
Then there was the issue of
finding a place to put the thing. Well that was no problem as I
had already made a space for it in that wall unit that housed
the TV, VCR,
DVD and Receiver. It turned out to be something of a problem as
the CPU turned out to be too big for the space that I had made.
So I had to think fast and wound up putting it on one of our end
tables instead. The only thing that I had to do then was to plug
in all the cables, turn it on and make sure everything was
kosher.
Well, nearly everything was
kosher. The TV worked great as the monitor, and after some
tweaking with the video card settings I am now able to use
programs like Word and Excel without having to squint to see the
type. It works best when it is set at 800 x 600 then 1024 x 720,
which are the only two options that I have available.
 Once
I had gotten the computer up and running, then it was time for
the arduous task at hand – installing all of my games and
copying all the files I would need onto the new machine. The
first one to be installed was, you guessed it, Madden 2004! I
was also struck by where the files went in XP and how different
the file system was from Win98. XP is indeed a much better
system than Win98, although I think our other P IV will still
keep Win98 as I have heard of some problems when trying to
perform an upgrade to XP.
Anyway, I put all the files where
they needed to go and I was soon up and running on my new
system. Then it was time to put all of my other games on there.
Madden 2003 and 2002 installed without a hitch and ran just
fine. NCAA Football ’99 also loaded onto the machine as well.
Although when I exited out of that game for the first time, the
screen was at 600 x 400 and I couldn’t get it to correct
itself. I wound up doing a system restore to get it to correct
itself, but I wound up having to re-install the game as well as
the Saitek controller. I figured out how to re-set the video
settings without having to restore the whole system in the video
card settings.
I was also able to install Halo
on my system, as well as NHL 2001. Although Halo seems to work
just fine, for some reason NHL 2001 would not start up no matter
what
I tried. So I wound up having to go out and buy NHL 2004 and
have spent the last couple of weeks tinkering with the AI
settings in order to get a more realistic gameplay. I think I
have finally found a set of sliders that works for me and I have
started my LA Kings dynasty. As always I put myself on the Kings
as a Center, and scored my first career goal against Detroit in
a 2-0 win in the Season Opener. I think  I’m
going to like the 2004 version better since there are more
throwback jerseys available. I’ve always liked the Kings
Purple and Gold unis.
Anyway, I also put Madden 2004
through its paces with the new video card, and it turns out that
Jeremy Strauser was right. There is field degredation in the
rain and snow, and the uniforms do get dirty as the game goes
on. It
looks like he was right when he said that you will only see that
on higher end ATI Raideon or GeForce cards. Now I have both of
our computers sharing one Cable Modem as we have it hooked up to
a router. Setting it up was something of a problem though as our
old Toshiba modem wouldn’t talk to the router for some reason,
so we had to buy a new Motorola modem to get the system to work.
I am going to be having a lot of
fun with this in the coming months, and hopefully years ahead.
Now wifey has her own computer and I have mine. It should make
playing games, maintaining this site, writing my book and
hunting for a job that much easier on me as I won’t have to
rush through all of the stuff that I want to do before noon
anymore. Now I can do what I want without having to rush through
it so that Molly can maintain her business and get some money
coming into our bank accounts.
Now I can also dedicate some time
to re-vamping this site. I have gotten used to the look of the
site, but I’m going to try to make it easier for me to make
changes to it in the near future. So if you see some strange
things on the site that may not have been there before, don’t
worry, I’m just re-modeling the place.
It may take me some time however.
I have to do this one page at a time, plus there are some things
that I can't do on the Alienware that I can do on the
"old" computer. Like easily saving and re-naming pages
to this site, for instance.
So if you will all pardon the
dust I will try to get this re-model done as quickly as
possible.
Well, maybe not today. Wifey
wants to play hookey.
Until next time…
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