I try to upgrade my home computer every 3 years or so. And this summer was my upgrade year. For some reason, I just wasn’t in the mood to do my usual shop & build. I wanted, for once, to plug everything in and have it all work at the outset. Perhaps I won’t get the innards just as I want, but as long as the specs were OK and the price was right, I was going to go for it. And today? I went for it!

I bought a Sony Vaio home PC with Windows XP Media 2005. And a damn nice 17″ LCD to go with it. It’s a 3GHz machine with 200GB HD & 1GB RAM (though it shares that RAM with the video card). So far, I’m quite pleased with it. Of the 200GB drive, 5GB is the backup area and 24GB is the preinstalled crap stuff. First thing I did after jumping through all the sign-in hoops was download Zone Alarm, then eTrust antivirus and finally GAIM. Oh, and I’m installing City of Heroes. Heh. The monitor is as nice as it looked in the store. Though it means I’ll have to go through my Sylv pics and make 1280×1024 wallpapers of ’em. (Using one from the BBC site at the mo.)

It came with a TV tuner onboard, plus DVD burner, etc etc. I’ll have to see how these work. And it’ll be interesting working with XP on a daily basis. (I have XP Pro on my laptop, but it’s not a daily use item.)

Not gonna say how much I spent, but let’s just say that I’m glad they had 18 months same as cash available at Best Buy. Oh, and I bought a Network Music Player as well – will let you all know how that goes too.