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Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Goldwyn Buys Rights To The Wizard Of Oz, January 26, 1934


THIS IS NOT THE TRANSCRIPT FOR THIS PODCAST ---- but please read it anyway.

If you are bothered by crass appeals to buy things, you may want to skip over this post. I won’t mind.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to what I do on our home PC (not the laptop, but the desktop machine) and I’ve really come to question why I haven’t switched to a Mac. I used to defend my continued use of Windows by saying that I like to game on my PC, which is true. However, I find that I really don’t have time for much of that these days since I try to put out a podcast three or four evenings during the work week and still post here occasionally.

The other roadblock to Mac ownership has been money. The machine I really want now, the new 20” iMac, is $1699. That’s a lot of dough compared to the PC that can be built for that money. What draws me to the machine is not the hardware specs, but the included software, mainly iLife ’06. I need to take my podcast to the next level of professionalism if I am ever going to cross that divide to some sort of underwriting and I believe the new features in iLife can help me do that. Yes, all of the same things can be done with a Windows machine, but not without spending some real money.

So here’s my plan: sell my current PC and buy an iMac. I think my current setup (see below) would sell for the price of the entry level iMac (the 17” version) and I’ll get one of those if need be. I’ve considered asking my podcast subscribers to donate, but I can’t help feeling a little sleazy about that. I DID ask for contributions to help pay for bandwidth (as problem that still exists, but I have made some cost-saving changes), but a lot of podcasters do that so at least I’m not alone.

I will miss PC gaming, but I have more constructive things I should be doing with my time. And, for the record, X-Plane (one of the greatest flight sims ever produced), runs on OS X. So who knows!

Specs:

Antec Lifestyle II (I think) black ATX case with 380W Power Supply
AMD 3700+ Processor (San Diego core, I think)
2 GB PC3200 RAM
74GB Western Digital 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive
120GB Western Digital 7,200RPM IDE Hard Drive
NEC DVD/CD Burner (dual-layer capable)
eVGA Nvidia 6800GT Video Card 256MB RAM
SoundBlaster Audigy 2ZS Sound Card
Floppy Drive
19” Samsung 191T LCD Monitor (1280x1024 native resolution)

Everything is gently used in excellent like-new condition. Nothing has been overclocked or otherwise altered.

If you are seriously interested, please drop me a line and I’ll send photos. I’d like to get $1500 (or best offer) for the entire thing and I’d rather not sell it in pieces. I’d like to sell it to someone local, but I will ship it if need be (we will have to discuss the shipping costs, but I think it may be around $60 UPS ground to most areas).

This is not a casual PC; it’s meant to do heavy-duty work or serious gaming. I say this because some of you who are not tech-savvy will compare this to a $500 machine from Dell---there is no comparison and if you just want something to surf the web with, this is not the machine you need.

Or, if you just want to kick in a couple bucks to the cause, please visit my podcast site and click the donation link on the left. If everyone who subscribes to the ‘cast pitches in $3, I’ll be in tall cotton---as someone says.

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