Having been employed now for almost a full three months I finally have for the the first time in almost four years some disposable income. On the cards for some time was getting myself a new PC as my main PC was starting to get a little old. After all it is 5 years of age now and creaking along the seams a little bit. I had a gander around at the main players such as Dell and HP et al and decided that price wise I might would be better off building my own one.

After poking about the usual sites I settled on a bundle offered from Dabs.ie made up of the following:

CPU: AMD Phenom II 1090T Black Edition. 6 Cores at 3.2Ghz.
Motherboard: ASUS M4A87TD EVO.
RAM: 4GB DDR3
HD: Samsung Spinpoint 1TB
Case: Antec Sonata III with 500w PSU.
Video: Gigabyte nVidia GeForce GTX460 with 1GB RAM.

The total came to just a shade under €700 including shipping which was bang on my budget. The parts had all arrived last friday so after a week of having it up and running I have to say I’m very impressed with the performance of it.

This is actually my first PC that has an AMD CPU. I was initially planning to buy an Intel Core i7 but from reading various reviews the Phenom II seemed to be almost on a par with the i7 I was looking at and was a little bit cheaper too. The motherboard and the CPU support overclocking too but I haven’t gotten around to trying that out yet.

Other factors that led me to decide on this combo was the motherboard supports USB 3.0 with four slots. It also has 6 SATA connectors one of which is connected to the eSATA connector on the front of the excellent case. The case with its 500w PSU is nice and big, easy to access with plenty of room for more disks with 6 x 3.5in drive bays. My plan is to start stuffing these to capacity over the coming months. Also the case comes with a front air filter which is very handy as I’m a smoker! The PC it’s replacing is rather filthy inside to say the least. Also the case has a nice large exhaust fan which is very quiet and has a switch to allow you to choose between three speed settings.

I also opted for just 4GB of RAM in 2 x 2GB modules in keeping with a view to upgrading in the future. My primary reasoning behind this was that Windows 7 flies along nicely on just 2GB of RAM and in keeping with my budget 4GB for the moment is plenty.

As always with a new PC the immediate performance is stunning. Over the Christmas holidays I intend on putting it thorough it’s paces with a few games that I am going to treat myself to but already I’m very pleased with my purchase

Anyone with any experience in a workplace will know it as a management buzzword that smacks of horseshit. When asked to define what synergy is you would invariably get the reply “1 + 1 = 3″

Not very helpful is it?

Synergy always annoyed me probably because like most people I didn’t understand or want to know the concept but it hit me like a ton of bricks over in the pub last night. Let me explain:

As it’s near christmas time, drink flows freely and occassionally a sing song might start up. Well last night one of three brothers started a song. When he was finished the second brother sang a song. This put the third brother under a bit of pressure to sing a song so he felt he has no choice so he eventually sang a song too.

There you go, Synergy!

1 brother singing + 1 brother singing = 3 brothers singing. 1 + 1 =3!

Now how to apply that to the business world without resorting to blackmail is anyones guess.

• Can now send and receive MMS messages
• Can now forward SMS and MMS messages!
• Spotlight search feature
• Landscape typing for Apple Apps
• Can now stream video and audio

So is it now worth your while buying one? Well, no it’s not. Battery life will still be atrocious and the damned thing is only now getting features that it should have had before it was made available.

There is a full list of updates over here on Wikipedia. Most of which should never have been considered updates to begin with.

At the moment it isn’t yet available for download and if you have an iPod touch you will be screwed for $9.95 as you will have to actually buy the update. So that will probably be something like €1000 for us in the Eurozone or 20p for anyone in the U.K. Given Apple’s exceptionally discriminatory pricing.

Absolutely awesome! be sure to check out some of the others here.

I can’t handle my drink anymore. It’s a good job the Blog Awards are an annual event. I’m actually still feeling a little bit rough around the edges.

The hotel was fantastic, service was brilliant but the staff were a bit busy needless to say which is where one of my curious incidents that I mentioned in my last post comes into play.

Immediately after the awards most of us headed out to the bar as they were clearing the chairs out of the function room. I was absolutely starving and was in dire need to line my stomach before the party got going so I went on the hunt for some bar food. My hunger wasn’t helped either having seen Grandad and Herself tucking into a lovely looking plate of something. Herself told me they finished serving bar food at 10:30 so I’d better be quick!

So I galloped up to the bar and asked for the menu but sure enough the barman said that they had finished serving for the night. I checked the time, it was 10:33!

I pleaded with him that it was only just gone half past and could I just get a quick order in but he said no. However he did ask me if I was resident in the hotel for the night. I said I was and he informed me that they have a 24 hour menu for residents and that I could go and order something from my room. It would be €4.50 extra but I wouldn’t have minded that.

Then I had an idea. What if I ordered from the bar and had it delivered to the bar while still paying the extra €4.50?

For some reason that unexpected question almost cause his head to explode. I could see the cogs turning in his head for what seemed like a small eternity, his eyes kind of glazed over until he finally managed to tell me that I could only have it delivered to my room! Didn’t make sense to me especially as the kitchen is right beside the bar! What difference would it have made?

Anyway I made do with a bag of Taytos and a Mars bar from the vending machine instead so the lack of food probably goes a long way to explain the extent of my hangover.

Once again it was great to meet all of the people I did.  There was another odd little incident which again involved the bar but I think Bock might write about that one. It was a fantastic evening and well done again to the winners and of course well done again to Mulley for arranging it all. I’m looking forward to the next one already!

My final thank you goes to Bernie Goldbach and Tipperary Institute who really helped make my night.

Looking forward to seeing you all again soon!

Lots happened that I can remember and some parts are coming back slowly as the pain in my head subsides. I did manage to meet everyone on my like to meet list though and of course I met lots more people who I’m looking forward to meeting again. Despite having a camera with me for most of the night I didn’t take many pictures.

There were a couple of funny incidents that happened over the night. I’m going to have to write about them tomorrow I think because I can just about barely focus on my screen. Bock will probably write about one of them. It was something that could probably only happen here in Ireland!

Anyway here are some (bad!) photos to look at. I’m heading back to bed!

“Prawo Jazdy” is Polish for “Driving Licence”

Apparently unlike our paper licences, the Polish one is a credit card sized ID type jobby. With “Prawo Jazdy” written in big letters along the top which our unwitting Gardai took to be the owners first and last names!

Legendary! More here in The Register. And a bit more here in the Indo.

Image from Wikipedia

There will be a new two part special of Red Dwarf to be shown on Dave over the easter weekend.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7851989.stm

Of course this isn’t good news unless you can actually receive Dave but I’m sure the episodes will appear online in a matter of hours after broadcast!