jay_merrill
Vice Admiral
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2007
- Messages
- 5,653
I 'lost" my photo editing and office computer several years ago, due to a lightening strike on the house. While I didn't get around to figuring out exactly what was wrong with it until recently, suffice it to say that the thing wouldn't run.
I replaced the unit with my previous computer, which was being used for another purpose. I had that one set up to run three monitors, so it wasn't a terrible replacement, but it has a slower, Celeron processor and less RAM. Strangely enough, this computer too, decided to "go south" recently, by "eating" not only the Windows XP operating system, but the recovery partition too! Grrrrrrrrrrrrr! I hate it, when stuff like that happens.
Since I owed a model a bunch of photos, which I was in the middle of editing when that one died, I went to Wallyworld and bought a cheap, low profile machine to get back in business. Its a great little 'puter for $300 and came with XP rather than Vista or Windows 7, but it has no expansion capability - not even a PCI slot for a video card!
All of this made me get my butt in gear to fix the one that was "zapped." I had all of the components in the machine tested and found out that only the power supply and motherboard were bad. Happy days .... almost. Believe it or not, I couldn't find a new replacement motherboard for it, even though its only a little over 3 years old, a name brand and one of the most popular brands. I actually had to source a refurbished board!
That said, I found the board that I needed and a suitable, 650 watt power supply. In addition to replacing those items, I doubled the memory in it and added a GeForce 8200 video board to the GeForce 7900 that I already had in it. I now have three DVI video outputs and one VGA output, running four monitors! Combined, the monitors give me 80 inches of viewing space and are set up to operate as one. Yup, I can move windows around to any one of them!
Better yet, I also bought an IOGEAR KVM switch, which allows me to use the fourth monitor either on the main machine, or the little EMachines computer that I bought as a temporary unit. With a "double punch" of the "scroll lock" key, I can bounce back and forth between the two computers and use one wireless keyboard & mouse to operate either one!
Now I can do this -
while watching a movie, putting photoshop toolbars all over the place. leaving Outlook running etc.
I'm feeling very spoiled about now!
PS: Mods, I think this is "G Rated" enough for the forums, but if its not let me know and I'll put something else up.
???
I replaced the unit with my previous computer, which was being used for another purpose. I had that one set up to run three monitors, so it wasn't a terrible replacement, but it has a slower, Celeron processor and less RAM. Strangely enough, this computer too, decided to "go south" recently, by "eating" not only the Windows XP operating system, but the recovery partition too! Grrrrrrrrrrrrr! I hate it, when stuff like that happens.
Since I owed a model a bunch of photos, which I was in the middle of editing when that one died, I went to Wallyworld and bought a cheap, low profile machine to get back in business. Its a great little 'puter for $300 and came with XP rather than Vista or Windows 7, but it has no expansion capability - not even a PCI slot for a video card!
All of this made me get my butt in gear to fix the one that was "zapped." I had all of the components in the machine tested and found out that only the power supply and motherboard were bad. Happy days .... almost. Believe it or not, I couldn't find a new replacement motherboard for it, even though its only a little over 3 years old, a name brand and one of the most popular brands. I actually had to source a refurbished board!
That said, I found the board that I needed and a suitable, 650 watt power supply. In addition to replacing those items, I doubled the memory in it and added a GeForce 8200 video board to the GeForce 7900 that I already had in it. I now have three DVI video outputs and one VGA output, running four monitors! Combined, the monitors give me 80 inches of viewing space and are set up to operate as one. Yup, I can move windows around to any one of them!
Better yet, I also bought an IOGEAR KVM switch, which allows me to use the fourth monitor either on the main machine, or the little EMachines computer that I bought as a temporary unit. With a "double punch" of the "scroll lock" key, I can bounce back and forth between the two computers and use one wireless keyboard & mouse to operate either one!
Now I can do this -

while watching a movie, putting photoshop toolbars all over the place. leaving Outlook running etc.
I'm feeling very spoiled about now!
PS: Mods, I think this is "G Rated" enough for the forums, but if its not let me know and I'll put something else up.
???