Category: Computer bits

Finally managed to get my hands on a new box to replace this aging radinfo server. It’s an old PACS workstation that’s being replaced with a new workstation, but still it’s a much better box than what I have radinfo on now.

The new box is a Dell Precision 530 (about 4 years old now) with dual 1.5 GHz P4s with 1 GB of RAM in it. Should be a much better box than the dual 450 MHz PII that I’m using now*.
Fedora 6 installation is in progress at the moment. Should take me a few days to migrate things over so hopefully by next week I’ll have the new server up and running in place of the old one.

Woo hoo!

*When nobody gives you a budget for these kinds of things, you have to scavenge computer hardware where ever you can.

My Little Tank (MLT) is another cute little game from Astraware that has a very simple premise: destroy all the other tanks. Nothing complicated about it, but it is a fun little distraction. You drive your little tank around looking for other tanks to destroy. Some tanks can be taken out with just one shot while others take more. Several different power-ups pop up in the game to give you weapon or speed upgrades, freeze or destroy tanks or to restore the health of your tank (even you can only take so many hits before getting wrecked). Getting past each level requires you to destroy a certain number of tanks and/or destroy one or more buildings.
For $10, it’s a nice cheap game you can add to your PDA and play while you’re killing time waiting to meet someone, at the doctor’s office or waiting for your next flight. Now what would make the game even better is if the Astraware folks could figure out a way to make the vibrating alarm go off when a tank was destroyed.

Wow, I must have totally missed the RAM specs on nVidia‘s new GeForce 8800 graphics cards. When did graphics cards start needing 768MB of RAM? I know the new games are pretty GPU intensive, but wow.
Graphics cards have gone from being just a peripheral to practically being a whole other computer embedded in another computer (and costing about as much too).

While I’m probably a ways away from attempting a Vista upgrade or buying a new machine with Vista, Tom’s Hardware has a very good article that outlines a number of things to consider and steps to take when you go for the Vista upgrade plunge. If you’re contemplating Vista in the near future, it’s definitely worth a read.