My current systems, you ask?
My main PC is a Dell 9100 – yes, it’s not ideal, and not a patch on my old self-build, but the main plus point: absolutely free. Flood damage is great, especially when it’s to an old PII400 that can’t be economically replaced.
What happened to my old self-build? Gave it to my brother – after all, a shiny new P4 531 has to be better than an Athlon XP 2500+@3200+, surely? Not quite. But, it does have SATA and PCI-E and DDR2 RAM and not enough expansion bays for all three of my 5.25″ drives (DVD reader, LG DVD burner and Yamaha CRW-F1).
I think the main plus point of the case is that it’s a BTX design, so there’s a quiet 12cm fan blowing onto one of the largest heatsinks you have ever seen. Keeps the P4 fairly cool.
I smell cannabilisation coming up…
Full(ish) spec:
- Pentium 4 531
- 512MB DDR2 RAM
- ATI X700Pro 128 (bargain, BTW – £50 from Misco)
- 160GB SATA, 2×120GB PATA HDD (really need to consilidate these)
- Add-in generic Firewire card
- Add-in generic PATA card (crappy Intel 945P legacy-free mainboard)
This is running a trial version of Windows Server 2003 – “what Windows should be™”. I don’t use it for any of the server features, just as a really stable desktop OS. I really should buy a full license, but I can’t afford the £400 at the moment. At least as a trial (albeit long-term) it’s still kind of legal. 
The second system I have is a Dell Latitude D505. Another Dell? Yeah, it’s provided as part of the job, so it’s not really “mine.” Still, it works fairly well. I would have preferred a screen a bit larger than the standard XGA (1024×768), but I can’t really complain. This has:
- Pentium M 730 (1.6GHz)
- 512MB DDR RAM
- 40GB HDD
- DVD/CDRW combo
- Intel 2100 Wireless (best bit
)
At the moment, it’s triple-booting Windows XP, Server 2003 and Suse 10.0. For a little while it’s also had Mac OSx86, Mandriva 2006.0 and Longhorn 5231 in place of Suse, but each have had their down sides. Mac OS, although a really nice system, didn’t like the wireless, which is one of the main points to having a laptop, Mandriva Free didn’t support the Intel wireless firmware out-of-the box, and Longhorn, though promising, messes around leaking memory and generally confusing my wireless router with its new-fangled IPv6. Oh, and there are legalality concerns. So back to Suse 10.0, which I’m really very happy with. It’s nice to be back using Linux again.
