Tong Family

Ah for the days when you just read PC Magazine and that was it to find the best computer hardware and software, now its all about the web. Since I’ve been buying a bunch of PCs this month, here are the sources I’m using in stackranked order of quality IMHO.…

I’ve had one of these “Audiotron’s”:http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/audiotron/feedback.asp forever but have never really used it much. Spent a little time hacking and realized it doesn’t work because it needs a magic user name and password to access a file share. Aargh. How is anyone supposed to remember this stuff, let alone that…

IP-Tools. Need to figure out what’s on my network. I should have written it down but I forgot. Here’s a tool that will scan for me. Here are some utilities: * “SoftPerfect Network Scanner”:http://www.softperfect.com/products/networkscanner/. A high google hit. Freeware and seems fast too for finding systems. * “WinPCap”:http://winpcap.polito.it/. Free network…

OK, so you don’t want to spend a mint, but get the best price/performance. In many ways, mid-range systems offer the best value. I need one to replace Calvin’s PC, so here is the recommendation. Again based on “Anandtech”:http://anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2177&p=1: * AMD Athlon “3200+”:http://hometheaterspot.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=1247981&blsrt=1. This is the last of the 1MB…

So based on the Anandtech guides, here is what I’m getting for a high end system. This is a system I’d design for video, photo and gaming. Right now, the PC I have is just too slow for video editing and rendering (takes 3 hours to render a 15 minute…