PC - Collection

Monster

This one's my Media Center. It can play Blu-Ray, DVD's, all kind of DivX and of course all Audio Format. It also acts as a VCR, allowing me to record Cable TV. (with a nice EPG-Frontend)

Current Hardware is a Intel Core2Duo E6300 with 2GB of Ram (this was necessary for Blu-ray Playback)

At the beginning it was a Pentium III 500MHz, which was then replaced by an Athlon Thunderbird 1333MHz (mainly for playing Windows Games or run M.A.M.E.)

With Games demanding more and more Performance, it got upgraded to an Athlon 64 3200+ (or was it 3400+ ? Can't remember that little detail)

Few years later the Motherboard committed Suicide, which forced me to switch to the actual Configuration.

It's running a Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (the only Windows System left I use regularly). Several years back I was looking for a nice Media Center Software. I tried them all...MythTV, Media Portal and many more which don't even exist anymore.

None of them worked out-of-the-box like the Media Center Edition of XP did. It came with it's Remote Control, and has ever since been able to do everything I wanted it to do.

Well, that said, that has been a few years ago. I might check out the latest Releases of MythTV or Media Portal, which have been improving over the last few years.

Why do I call it Monster ? Simply because my Wife finds it ugly and has been calling it the ugly Monster ever since.

Toshiba Satellite P100

This one's my mobile Workstation, with a Core2Duo PCU, and 1GB of Ram.

I got it in July 2006, as a Special Offer for the Fifa World Cup.

Since then, it has been dual-booting Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux.

Well, most of the time I work with Linux, so Windows XP gets started more and more rare.

This Notebook is powerful enough to run World of Warcraft, and since Wine on Linux has improved to allow full screen 3D Games to run, Windows XP has lost all it's Interest.

I particulary liked the Orange Top Cover, which was pretty unusual for 2006.