Computer Upgrade

The title of the post says it all. I had absolutely nothing to write about except for my boring weekend which got a little spiced up because of a major upgrade or call it migration I did for my 5 year old computer.

I, rather we, got our computer 5 years back on 18th October 2000 exactly the day when KBC got its first Crorepati in the form of Harsh Vardhan Nawathe. That time I was absolutely mad about KBC and some how I managed to catch up with both KBC and computer arrival. I know how much of effort had gone into getting the computer, since my requests at home are never entertained so easily, neither are they given any importance. The things now have changed very much. Initial expense on the computer was Rs. 52000. In this rate now perhaps I will get the best of the breed PCs. But I was pretty satisfied at that time since it was one of the best branded PCs available in the market with the latest configuration and hardware.

For more than 3 years my PC was functioning very well until I started tinkering with it. As with SAP, if you tinker wth it, you will be in trouble kind of situation. Slowly problems started cropping up in the PC with the first problem cropping up concerning to the slowness of the PC. That time I was in Manipal and we were using Win ME only since our PC could not support Win XP. After I came for the summers in April 2004 I did the first major upgrade for the PC by moving from 64 MB RAM to 192 MB RAM and from a normal CD Drive to a DVD + CD Rewritable drive. Cost of this upgrade was close to 4500 Rupees since the memory for a P III computer costs you more than a memory of a P IV computer. Thereafter a series of other enhancements took place for example a LAN card for the broadband connection and a USB Port for the digital camera and the laser printer.

With ever increasing amount of data in the computer and scarcity of the disk space leading to extreme slowness in the computer, I decided to upgrade the hard disk from Quantum 15 GB to a Seagate Barracuda 80 GB. Surprisingly my motherboard supported the new hard disk. The cost of the new hard disk was 2600 which is perhaps the lowest price in the market. Now I have plenty of space to store whatever I want. I also migrated the entire data from the old hard disk to the new hard disk in a NTFS partition. The best part of upgrade is that even with NAV 2005 the system start up time has reduced considerably and their are no hang ups which use to happen with the old hard disk.

In the future I do not see any major upgrade happening for my computer since there are no parts left which need any enhancements. for the first time, in this weekend, I have not stepped out from my house. Waiting anxiously for the homecoming where I will meet all my TAPMI pals.