segfaulting. Files were disappearing. The computer was hanging. I
suspected a bad memory chip, so I rebooted and ran memory tests. The
computer shut down in the middle and wouldn't post for thirty minutes.
Switching out the memory modules didn't help. Reseating the CPU didn't
help. I suspect the northbridge chip overheated.
Nothing has happened since I cleaned up the CPU fan and some other gunk inside, but she's become gun-shy about doing serious work on her computer, so her
studies have fallen off. The laptop that I bought her was originally
for office stuff, so she needed a new one equipped to handle Blender
and raytracing.
I spent three days researching what hardware to get for Goy's new
computer. She'll be doing a lot of Blender work on it, so I wanted the
best 3D I could reasonably get for her. I also wanted to make sure
that all the network cards, audio chipsets, etc. were well supported.
Despite being a big fan of AMD for many years, I chose to go with an
all Intel machine for the simple reason that Intel is currently
releasing vendor-supported FLOSS drivers, which will be included and
supported in the kernel for forever. There will be no "download the
latest binary driver from ...." I won't have to worry about tweaking
xorg.conf to get the most out of the nvidia driver. The laptop
wireless which we have now is based on the rt2500 chip and is also
vendor supported, but has a problem working with the new Network
Manager. Intel Pro Wireless doesn't have this limitation.
So, I went with the following hardware for her:
• Intel Core 2 Duo (add speed)
• 2GB of RAM
• Intel GMA 950 graphics chip
• Intel Pro Wireless
• 200GB SATA
• DVD
• etc.
The monitor is a 22" widescreen LCD, probably the most expensive
single component in the machine.
The cost for this was 1.1M Won,
Well, the hardware arrived, and the bastard at the computer shop tried
to substitute a cheap-ass Maxwell wireless for my Intel Pro. I made my
displeasure quite clear. The replacement will come in today.
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