Hardware Overkill
My uncle volunteers (works?) at a “club” in town where AA and NA meetings are held, and wanted me to inventory the parts in a computer the accounting department uses. Since it was a computer designed for Quickbooks, Excel, and maybe some email, I was expecting a fairly low-end computer, or maybe a 2 or 3-year-old Dell. When I got to his shop, I was surprised to see an off-the-shelf case, not an OEM’s. This computer had been built by somebody that worked at the club, most likely with a bookkeeping solution in mind. Before opening it up, I ran CPU ID to get some specifics on what was under the hood. The processor didn’t impress (a Celeron 1.8ghz), nor did the RAM (640mbs PC2100 DDR), NOR did the hard drive (a 20gb Fujitsu). The case also sported mismatched optical drives: a 48x CD-ROM and an HP CD-RW of unknown speed. However, I noticed that the motherboard had audio/video/LAN built-in, but that an AGP video card and PCI audio card had been added. I thought that was a little unnecessary for a bookkeeping machine, and when I checked the display adaptor information, I got just a little jealous.
For whatever reason, the guy that built this thing decided that a computer designed to run Excel needed a GeForce FX 5200 (128mb) in it. Now, that’s not the most insane card on the market, far from it. In fact, it’s basically a “budget” card designed to replace the MX440 line, but when you compare it to my hopelessly outdated ti4200, yeah, you get a little jealous. It wouldn’t be a HUGE performance increase, but maybe I could get some AA out of it. Also, the motherboard had a PCI Express slot going to waste. I’m not so sure the guy that built it REALLY knew what he was doing.
After writing up a list of all the computer’s components (the guy that built it was recently let go under less-than-favorable conditions and they suspect sabotage (!), and are paranoid enough to remove their wireless networking hardware and inventory the parts in this computer…), I explained to my uncle that the motherboard had integrated video and that the additional AGP card, a low-end gaming card, was basically going to waste in an office machine. I told him that if they “don’t find any use for it” to get ahold of me, because I sure could use a cheap (or free?) replacement for this ti4200. If I don’t get any better performance out of it, I can always use it in another computer.
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