If you are still not using 64-bit operating systems you should read

tcolguin said:

madtownidiot said:

The customer doesn't know what he wants until you show it to him.
The range of available products is limited by an acquisitive but short-sighted near monopoly. If someone were to design a liquid immersed 6 socket system that ran off an external or network HDD or flash memory, had 6, 12, or 24GB RAM, weighed no more than 15 pounds and was about half the size of a shoe box, even with currently available mid-range components (except for a main board) it could outperform any air cooled system of a similar price and would never overheat, but you couldn't install windows to it.

Sounds great! Where can I buy that for $500 and I will want it to run everything I'm using my current computer for. I don't care about Windows just make it work. When can you deliver it?

That's the problem... something like that is possible and would not be difficult to design. It would cost about $800 if it had cheap AMD64 processors, ddr2 RAM and a good integrated graphics chip or 2, but because the windows license doesn't allow for more than 1 or 2 physical CPUs it will never be built.

KazeNoKoe23 said:

I'm all for using 64-bit Windows on a primary machine, which I do, but I also own a netbook powered by an Atom N270, so in its case, 64-bit is out of the question. XD

Hi there
although I own and use a lot of High end gear running 64 bit Windows / Linux mix I actually find the computer I use most THESE days (and I only bought it a few weeks ago) is a tiny really light and wafer thin ACER ONE L0521 Netbook with the newer AMD (faster) processor rather than the older INTEL ATOM one.

I changed the 1 GB RAM to 2 GB and swapped the slowish HDD for a faster 7400 320 GB HDD and this tiny machine runs just fine for most of the apps I need to do while travelling. Upping the RAM and putting in a faster HDD made all the difference.

I removed all the pre-installed bloat and W7 starter and installed W7 pro instead. This also makes a difference - getting rid of the trial, crap and adware that comes pre-installed with store bought computers.

It has decent video with HDMI output and even runs Photoshop CS5 acceptably. Office apps -- no prob as well as surfing the net and playing multi-media.

I can even run a small XP Virtual machine on it too - my scanner won't run on W7 -- vmware workstation runs just fine on this netbook.

You can plug in an external DVD if you need to burn DVD's but since the machine will boot readily from USB I don't really need DVD's any more. I run all my multi media from external pocket size USB powered HDD's -- even a small WD 1TB drive only costs around 120 USD and smaller capoacity drives are really cheap.

Now by any standard this is a fairly modest machine running W7 Pro 32 bit -- but it does EXACCTLY what I need and is really convenient to travel around with --really important now with baggage restrictions and security hassles at airports etc.

Sometimes we get carried away by technology -- my netbook works JUST FINE.

If I need 3D / Holographic images or a machine foir ultra fast gaming then I'd buy one.

Most people aren't even using 20% of what they have NOW - I'm all in favour of modern technology but sometimes "going back to basics" isn't always a bad idea either.

Cheers
jimbo

Just up your HDD to a SSD....