I just saw a presentation of an incredible new computer technology being developed in Japan. The computer looks like a pen. It's small and light enough to fit in a shirt pocket. It projects images of a keyboard and a screen on any available flat surfaces. You can use the projected keyboard and see results on the projected screen. Cool! Talk about portability! I hope these hit the market soon.

I just got my cooler master 932 case today, for those that like big bulky tower PC's its the ultimate in cases.

River

I have an open "skeletal" case, near the window, no storm window, this winter, with a small clip-desk fan blowing on the CPU. I have to watch that the philodendron doesn't grow too close to it. I don't get as much frost on the glass now, either. It's easier than replacing fans...

Wow, I feel so inferior.

So you guys assemble your own computers from components? I've never thought to try. Is there much to learn? Do you get better performance? Save money? Or it's mainly for fun?

I work on my own, and yeah, in the past I've cobbled them together with parts. This one is pretty much as patched as it's going to get, though.

Yes, part of it is a joy of putting it together, but mainly for me the cost of a PC is that I save for several months or buy a part of two each month. This time I started with the case, next month the power supply and video card then the month after that the mother board, memory and CPU. i will keep my hard drives, cd rom drives keyboard, naga and nostromo. Its little upgrades as you go, tweaking it as it were. The other real advantage by buying a part at a time and building your own is you get to pick exactly the system you want, that best suites your needs at a good price, meaning you don't always get the parts from the same place. Who ever is the cheapest wins.

The case I got from Newegg, no tax, no shipping fee.

River

bobover3 (imported) wrote: Fri Feb 08, 2013 6:35 pm So you guys assemble your own computers from components? I've never thought to try. Is there much to learn? Do you get better performance? Save money? Or it's mainly for fun?

Assembling your own computer is not really difficult (just needs steady hands sometimes).

As for reasons - convenience, a bit of saving money and control.

I just DO NOT trust those machines, which I did not assemble myself (seen way too much examples of bad assembly).

I have, probably, seen too many university computers with bad parts, bad combination of parts or too cheap power supply (in few cases "Sparkman" power supplies lived to it's name).

And, assembling computer from good parts is fun.

Do you know how many pens I lose on a daily basis? Unless they sell that thing by the gross and Amazon.com will delivery them free, I'll never own one.

As to assembling things, I can always assemble my thoughts in a linear fashion but..having MS means never having to say you're sorry you cannot pick things up and not drop them, or having them go down an air conditioning outlet or the toilet or the garbage disposal...quaking, shaking hands cannot assemble anything. And I lose things due to the "fall out" from lack of ability to hold on to whatever. (See first line...)

Perhaps that goes part way as to why I had myself castrated; I could envision a day when I might have been playing pocket pool, had a seizure and ripped them off. Explain how that happened to the rescue people save that you'll not be able to as you're out cold. And then you wake up to some nice young intern in the ER saying, "Sir, we tried to save them but...." .

fhunter wrote: Sat Feb 09, 2013 1:22 am Assembling your own computer is not really difficult (just needs steady hands sometimes).

As for reasons - convenience, a bit of saving money and control.

I just DO NOT trust those machines, which I did not assemble myself (seen way too much examples of bad assembly).

I have, probably, seen too many university computers with bad parts, bad combination of parts or too cheap power supply (in few cases "Sparkman" power supplies lived to it's name).

And, assembling computer from good parts is fun.

Agree, last night my son and I started talking about power supply's and which one I should get, we decided on the Coolermaster 750w. It more then has the power requirements for upgrades and will handle all the power needs for the machine I am building. Then you plug in the power cables you use, unlike other power supplies that give you a power supply with 8 or 9 cords running from it of which you only use 6, you get all the cables for the different functions that you will need and plug them in to both the power supply and the device, result no extra cables in your way, great for cable management. And best of all, its Coolermaster BLACK.

We have done this for each piece of the computer, why because its fun.

River

bobover3 (imported) wrote: Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:26 pm I just saw a presentation of an incredible new computer technology being developed in Japan. The computer looks like a pen. It's small and light enough to fit in a shirt pocket. It projects images of a keyboard and a screen on any available flat surfaces. You can use the projected keyboard and see results on the projected screen. Cool! Talk about portability! I hope these hit the market soon.

Well, I had computer, that could fit into my shirt pocket since about 2001 (I mean Palm PDA). Not the most powerful thing, but it worked. I occasionally administered server from it, read books on it, and used it as a notebook/address-book/calendar.

IMO, pen form factor is too small to be practical + the requirement for a flat surface to work on drops any ability to do mobile work.

As for the projected keyboard, it was available since about 2002 or so... The only problem, it does not work. Why give 120$ for a keyboard that works for two hours on battery, gives no feedback (ever tried to "type" on a hard surface?) and requires flat surface, when one can either get a good bluetooth keyboard for the same price? With feedback and lasting much longer.

Same goes for projection screen, the ones, small enough to fit into pen do not have high resolution, think WVGA or close to that. So the same - no mobile work, due to the requirement of available flat surface. And to do work on desktop, resolution is too low.

The third thing to kill the design right off, is battery capacity. You just can not fit big enough battery in such case.