Building a budget Vista PC

provided by www.crosslink-builder.com

I’m sending my MacBook Pro to an Apple repair center today because of the shutdown problem. According to an Apple tech support, the repair process could take up to 2 - 3 weeks depending on the problem. I cannot work without a computer for 3 weeks so I decided to build myself a PC and run Windows Vista RC1 on it.
Here’s the spec:

• GIGABYTE GA-M55SLI-S4
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-core Processor 3800+
• Generic 1GB RAM
• Western Digital 250GB Hard disk
• NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT

It took me about 1.5 hours to build the computer, not bad for a guy who hasn’t build his own PC for a very long time. The most tricky part when building this PC was figuring out how to install the front USB/Firewire ports to the motherboard. The motherboard manual do not provide enough information. Luckily, I found this guide on how to install the usb port.
The installation of Windows Vista RC1 was fast and easy. Windows Vista installation process is a huge improvement over previous versions. I tested Vista a few months ago and it took a very long time for the installers to load the files.
Vista did not have a driver for my PCI wireless network card, so I had to pull a very long cable from my router to the PC so I can run Windows Update. Windows Update did find a driver for my wireless network card, once it installed the correct driver.
For the next few weeks, I’m going to live on the bleeding edge by using a release candidate software on my main computer. I’ll be posting more Windows Vista related posts on this blog for the next few weeks.

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