Praying for an Upgrade

Poor baby. I’m giving her all she’s got and it’s just not enough any more.

My Inspiron 4100 has a 1Ghz CPU with a half-GB of RAM. It’s not enough any more. I still love the little beast, and use it every day. But I keep running into tasks for which it simply is not able. I’m also quite happy with CentOS 5.3, but it requires a little more machine for the stuff I do.

So if you understand prayer, pray with me for some kind of upgrade. I don’t much care if it’s a laptop or desktop system, but I would really like to have an LCD. I spotted quite a few decent systems on Craigslist, but I simply don’t have any room in the budget. That’s why it’s a matter of prayer. Not begging, but prayer.

I just passed off that clunky Pavilion 542x, and hope I never get another machine with such cheap components. Those Trigem boards are trash. HP, Compaq and Emachines cranked a lot of them. I’m not all that picky, but there’s no sense having something which is simply not going to work with Linux. I don’t care about fast video, huge harddrives, video cameras, etc. Frankly, something aimed at server use would be best, but I realize those tend to be a lot more expensive. So if you ask me while I’m dreaming, here’s what I consider close to ideal:

CPU at least 1.5Ghz, dual is better, RISC is nice
1GB RAM is plenty
Any video chipset for which X.org has drivers
Sound (anything that works with Linux)
Ethernet port
At least 30GB harddrive
DVD-RW
Display 17″ or better (capable of 1280×1024)

Yep, dreaming….zzzzz.