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It is 2016! We each have personal computers! Actually, I should say, "devices", since we all have more than one and they aren't all computers in the sense that most people understand them. There are 4 of us, and we all have at least one notebook (aka Laptop) computer, and one tablet. I'll get back to the "at least" part a little later.
In today's world, it's the notebook computer that's the typical product and it's the desktop that's a specialty item. Now that our children are at or close to teenage years, we all have uses for an actual computer. The last holdout was the daughter who started on a notebook computer playing games both online and locally loaded. But then, she went completely iPad oriented when she received her first one a couple of years ago. Last month, she announced to me that she intended on putting a "computer" on her Christmas List. I told her to take it off because, in our family, those are "regular use" items and not something special. WOW, what a different technological world a few years have made! Her reason was that she wanted to have her own Minecraft account, so didn't want to share with her brother! Anyway, that get's us to our current situation. We all have a "main" machine that we work on.
My son has gone through a series of various ThinkPads back to an IBM (!!!) ThinkPad A21p, many moons ago! Every couple of years, he's gotten an upgrade just as soon as somebody else upgraded from a machine that was too old and slow for their use. Of course, they've always been ThinkPads with the exception of my ill-fated foray into old gaming laptops first with a Clevo, that followed by an Alienware. Then, back I went, to the faithful ThinkPads, generally of 15" screen size because he mostly used them to play games on at home, till this the current school year when he started the 7th grade and needed to carry a machine back and forth. So, now he has a ThinPad X220 that's compact, thin, light and plenty powerful enough for doing PowerPoints, Google Docs and light research on the web..... oh, and the every-present "flash-games" that all middle school kids play! Minecraft has moved over to a "self-built" (me, not him) gaming box that got it's start from my brother sending an ASRock, Mini-ITX board populated with a second-gen Intel "Core" i5 processor. Eventually, it received my old third-gen i5 processor. Today, it does a nice job equipped with that, an Intel SSD, and an nVidia GTX 650 graphic card (so it can stream to nVidia Shield devices). More on that later as well. We have it hooked up to the new Sony 55" 4K TV in the game/media room.
His "personal" device, is the nVidia Shield Tablet. It has a nice 8" IPS screen, a powerful K1 Quad-Core processor and capable of streaming games from his gaming machine since that has certain level nVidia graphic card in it! He loves it when he's not "on restriction" from not keeping grades up to snuff! If you haven't read my earlier post on this thing, I'll go over the high-points quickly here. Other than the typical Android type things, and the game streaming that it can do, it also has a dedicated gaming controller as well, plus the capability to connect to an outboard monitor via HDMI and function as a "console". It's really a pretty slick concept and nVidia's execution is very nice.
On to the daughter. She, like her brother started her computing life via ThinkPads. In her case, custom (by Daddy) painted lavender, X31. That was replaced by a ThinkPad Z60t.....right around the time she got an iPad. The rest (the laptop too).... as they say; was history. That is, right up until last November, when she decided she needed her own machine so she could have her own aforementioned Minecraft account.
Then, she (I) got lucky! I had a friend who had a Sony VCPEH, a decent 15.6" screen "desktop replacement" of the "Sandy Bridge" Core generation. It was brought to me with an apparently dead screen/video sub-system to retrieve files. Indeed, the screen refused to light up regardless of what I did. However, it did output to an external monitor indicating the GPU was still good. They had already bought a new machine and didn't want the computer back after I got their files off. So it sat under my desk for several months then in a box due to our move to the new house. When I started looking into my daughter's request, it occurred to me that maybe I could just replace the panel on this Sony. This required me to take it apart so I could see the model number. When it went back together, the screen came back to life! This was followed by me digging into my parts boxes for more RAM, and a drive. So now she has an i5, with 8Gb of RAM, and a 160Gb Intel SSD. Like a certain overgrown elf, Daddy wiggled his fingers and made a computer appear.
Then there's my wife. And since I just recently wrote about her machine, I'll just quickly recap here. Several years ago, I talked her into a second-hand iPad (1st gen) because I knew of one I could get cheap. That was like 10 of these things ago! For me, they've been like the episode of the classic Star Trek, "The Trouble with Tribbles". They just keep multiplying! There is of course, her progression through the generations of these things. That was followed by the expansion into "kid territory" when the children were both elementary school age because Mom had them using apps to suppliment their school learning. All of that was part of the greater issue; that of her starting to use them in the classroom with her students. This grew into a full-scale conversion from a set of old ThinkPads to "older" iPads, and now to iPad Minis. We're up to 5 Minis (not counting my daughters) and one iPad2. Oh, and my wife is now on a 1st gen iPad Air.
Comparatively, her notebook computer progression is rather simple. She uses, mid-sized (15") ThinkPads. I typically get her something in the "T" Series, although, she's had "A"s, as well as "Z"s. We are how literally in the middle of moving her from a T500 to a T530. I've had SSDs in her machines for some time now. The newest machine has a 480Gb, Intel 2500 with 8Gb of RAM. Otherwise, the machine is unremarkable, but completely adequate for her needs. She hates it every time I do it, but I upgrade her about every 2 to 3 years as you can probably tell by the model numbers of the latest round. She swears it's more often, because I tend to reload her OS every year in between.
As for me; I just wrote about that issue a couple of days ago, so won't repeat it here other than to say that I'm going to talk tablets soon.
About a week ago, my brother sent me some parts. Basically, it was centered around an Asrock Mini-ITX motherboard of the Sandy-Bridge generation. Along with it came an "S" spec i5 processor, attendant cooling and other misc parts. As the much as I LOVE computer parts, I don't really need another machine. Granted, this board is technically more advanced than the one in my bedroom HTPC and could replace that, but why? That machine does exactly everything I need it to do, and does so quietly, because it's low-powered and therefore runs "cool"! So, what to do with this relatively capable board?
Most of you are aware that I have a young son. He's not quite a teenager, but he's close enough. Right now, he plays Minecraft and loves all things 3DS, but soon enough, he'll get into "real" gaming. This year, for Christmas, we got him a Steam account and bought the Kerbal rocket building program. I'm sure he's pretty quickly want to play other PC oriented games as well. As of right now, his ThinkPad T500 is fine for what he wants to do. However, being the Nerd-Dad that I am, I'm already ahead of him on where he headed..... and that won't be anything where his ThinkPad would be very good.
As I was helping my student rebuild her old Alienware, I started thinking that one of those might be a good candidate for my son as well. However, he just doesn't have that much space in his room. A few years ago, we reworked his room and built a large loft, so there's a space underneath that's his little "boy-cave". It's nice, but it's only the size of a "queen" bed under there. Right now, he has a cabinet, that holds a TV, his a GameCube (!), XBox, and a bunch of Legos. There's some seating and it's where he "hangs out".
You can probably see where this is going. Mini-ITX board, small hang-out area..... Mini-Gaming Computer! Although that Asrock board only has an H61 chipset, we certainly won't be over-clocking or anything close to that. We are talking an 11-year-old, after all! So; here's what I'm thinking on this. I'm going to use an actual stand-alone GPU so it will have some decent graphics ability. Maybe something long the lines of an Radeon HD 7770 or an nVidia 460; whatever I can get the best deal on. A re-tasked SSD, 320Gb mechanical drive and call it good.
We're done then; right? Not so much! What does an 11-year-old want his "gaming rig" to look like? If you're my son, then, anything green will be good. As soon as I saw the Azza CSAZ-103 case, I knew that it would be the case for the boy! As it turned out, it's inexpensive, and pretty much designed as a case that replicates a gaming console to some degree. Perfect! As soon as I land a suitable graphics card, we'll start building.
