I want a new computer for home. I don't strictly need one, but I can feel my current boxes getting slow - compared with work, and all of them have reached the end of their upgrade cycle. I don't know what to get- grey-box IA32/x86 system running 2K and/or Linux, or a PowerMac running OSX?
Currently I have a SPARC 5 running Solaris 2.6 that was junk at work. I though it would help me learn more Solaris stuff, in practice it's too old and slow to do much on, but I do tinker with it now and then. There is no way that I could ever justify a modern SPARC system, but I'd consider running Solaris on a IA32 box.
My main system is a Dell PentiumPro 200, that I have almost totally rebuilt twice. It's a dual-boot system that runs NT4 and RedHat 6. It spends most of it's life running NT, as I don't have drivers for it's WinModem for Linux, and the other systems depend on it for dial-up access.
My notebook is a remanufactured Dell Inspiron. It was a good deal when I bought it, and it's still running Win98 without a problem. It drives the USB scanner, and my other half uses it, as the keyboard fits her smaller hands better.
My final system is a scrap Dell Pentium 100, that work junked, and I rebuilt as a RedHat6 box. It acts as local DNS/DHCP, and I've played with this system a lot more than my dual-boot system. I'd use this one as the Internet gateway system, if it didn't have just a 28.8k modem. I'm also waiting for BT to get their arse into gear and upgrade my exchange to ADSL, but that could be a long wait....
I've got one of those cute Belkin PS/2 KVM switches, so whatever I get next, I don't want a monitor, keyboard or mouse, I have a that already, and I'm not changing.
What I fancy is a nice AMD 2000+ box, with 512Mb DDR-RAM, 40Gb HD, and a DVD-ROM player. Other than Eudora and the odd game, I don't use anything else at home on my Windows box, that doesn't run on Linux/Unix, so I can't see any point in getting XP. Linux, which has always been okay with me, seems to have nothing holding it back now.
Mac OSX appeals to me a lot, as I understand it's basically Mach/BSD underneath, with a nice GUI, and it runs Eudora, and several nice commercial packages that don't yet run on Linux. The only snag is that I've never used a Mac much, and a nice PowerMac G4 costs twice what a significantly more powerful grey-box IA32/Linux box does.
As nice as the Mac looks, I think it's going to be a IA32 box, all I have to do then is decided which OS to run: Solaris, BSD, or Liniux, and then which flavour...... I suppose this is another problem to add to my To Do list!
