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Maya

Mondo has been after the DL of my new computer's innerds for the past 2 weeks (that sounded dirty, que non?). I aim to please so let's get down and dirty.... or at least as down and dirty as possible in the next 15 minutes before I head to lunch because lunch is a very, very important meal and I am all kinds of huuuuuungry.

In case you missed the one blog post I actually remembered to put up this month, I BOUGHT A NEW COMPUTER! She's bright and shiny and smells just like the far eastern land of shiny new electronics. I named her Maya for no particular reason other than I thought it sounded like it went with Shiva (the name of my laptop) and Horus (the name of my wireless network). I unpacked her the day she arrived, but there's been a lot of moving and painting and rearranging and carpet cleaning (another 'that sounded dirty' but totally not dirty) going on around the joint so only last night around 1 a.m. CST did she finally settle in to her final resting spot. It's good for her to learn how to move around so flexibly in her younger years imho. Here're the specs:

• Pentium Core2 Duo 2.13 GHz processor
• Genuine Windows Vista... as opposed the the free range, black market, grain fed kind (thanks for clarifying that Dell)
• Two widescreen 22" flat-panel monitors
• 2GB dual channel SDRAM
• 320GB hard drive
• Your standard CD/DVD burning combo
• nVidia GeForce 7900 GS @ a sad 256MB
• 7.1 channel audio, but only a 5 channel speaker system including subwoofer - who needs SIDE speakers, honestly?

And cuz I wanted to nerd out a little further...

• An integrated 13-in-1 media card reader
• 3 extra firewire ports
• Wireless keyboard and mouse... but those only came much later

I ended up choosing a Dell for a variety of reasons, none of which involved the word 'pink'. On the list of possibilites were an Apple and building (there most certainly was a pink case all picked out and ready to order), but when it came right down to pricing my many and demanding needs Dell gave me the most for my money... even if I did want more memory on my vid card. In fact, the first time I called and tried to get 512MB or 768MB of memory with my card the rep said to me, "Um, yeah, I'm going to need to know what you plan to use your computer for before I can give you that kind of information"

Wait, did I just get attitude? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I just got attitude. "That's really none of your business. I want to upgrade the memory to 512 or 768, how does that price out?"

"We can't give out that kind of information without knowing what you plan to use it for."

"Weapons of mass destruction, clearly. Now do you want the sale or not?" If I had been thinking clearly I should have said, "Now do you want the sale 'er no?" cuz a little Minnesotan accent would have run a lot of interference on their monumental stupidity that ended up costing them a couple hundred dollar sale.

Dumbasses.

So far I'm pleased with Vista. She's running it without any trouble whatsoever, which is nice so I can immediately respond to my many and unvaried allow and deny demands without any lag. Nice touch. To be honest I haven't delved too far in to Vista's intricacies yet so giving a proper review isn't really in anyone's best interest.

I will add that I'm surprised by Vista's dual monitor support. Sure it supports dual monitors but I had to download UltraMon just get two different wallpapers on each monitor and extend the toolbar across both screens. Really Microsoft, do you even use your own product? Shocking.

Annnnnd, your time is up. Lunch! The next blog post won't be from work... it'll be from 'The Command Center' right after I'm done launching weapons of mass destruction.