A few weeks ago I decided to improve my computer. Why? Well I realised that I needed to invest some cash in it, after all, it’s key to have a good as computer when you’re developing and running websites. Otherwise it would be like running a limo service with an old mini.

I effectively have a new computer, I already had a spare case, PSU, ATI graphics card, hard-drive, and had recently bought a DVD/CD rewriter, so I added a Dual Core 2 processor, 2 gigabytes of memory, motherboard and a case fan.

After installing everything, which took a while as I’m very much a novice at these kinds of things, the computer runs nice and quickly.

I’m running Ubuntu on it and I prefer it over Windows, especially when running dual monitors on it is much easier.

I haven’t really tested it much, but when running ‘Alien Arena 2007′ on it, it ran very smoothly.

Out goes Photoshop and in comes GIMP. It’s supposedly a Linux copy of the aforementioned. It has lots of features which I’ve yet to check out. I’ll be working on some sites, so I’ll be giving the software a test drive.

I’ll report more of Ubuntu as time goes on. At present, I don’t think I’ll be going back to Windows any time soon.

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I’ve not done anything more with Ubuntu during the week, but I’ll probably have another look at it over the weekend.

Something I have been looking at is upgrading my PC. I currently have a HP Pavilion 453.uk with INTEL Pentium 4 2.4GHz and just 512mb DDR memory. I’d like to upgrade to a INTEL core 2 dual processor with at least 1GB of DDR 2 memory.

Admittedly, I’ve no complaints with the computer, it has and still does perform well, however, since I’ve changed to using dual monitors, I’m now able to do more things at once, so it’s logical to upgrade, as the better PC, the better the performance.

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Yesterday I tried out Ubuntu and it was a bit hit and miss.

The install was quick and almost everything worked straight away - like mouse, keyboard and even my internet connection.

Unfortunately, my monitor’s resolution of 1440 x 900 wasn’t available, which was odd. I had to mess around finding out how to change the xorg.conf file, which was tedious.

Trying to get a dual monitor setup on Ubuntu was annoying, lots of messing around changing this and that, which resulted in errors.

I have to admit, I missed the ease of adding new hardware and software on Windows. But that said, I haven’t given up on Ubuntu, as in the long term, these irritations could be well worth it.

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After trying different configurations on my ‘ill’ modem/router I finally gave up and took the option to update the firmware. At first it didn’t work, but later when I came back it amazingly did, which was a relief.

During the above problem I decided on formatting my PC’s hard-drive due to the other modem’s refusal to work. Also the hard-drive had become cluttered with various software installations after a year, so it was time.

Now, I’m considering dumping Windows XP. It’s out-dated and I have no interest in purchasing and upgrading to Vista.

Currently I’m looking at Ubuntu after hearing good things about it, and so my give it a trial over the weekend.

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