Finally upgraded my cheap-ass Walmart PC

Over the Holidays, I found some great deals on new computer equipment on NewEgg.com and ended up picking up some stuff to put into my old PC. I hoped to give a little bit of gaming kick to get myself up to speed with the current generation of games; my PS2 was starting to lose its appeal.

I got 4GB of RAM and a GeForce 9800GT graphics card bundled with Call of Duty 4 for around $130.00 after rebates. When the package came in the mail, I frantically ripped open my PC and began to install these much-longed-for goodies.

The first thing I noticed was that I was literally one millimeter away from not having room for the GeForce. The thing is huge, and it just barely had enough clearance to slide into place. With a sigh of relief, I felt it slide down into place and lock.

Next up was the RAM. When I went to unclip the old RAM, I realized that the graphics card was so huge, the RAM clips actually touched it when they were closed, forcing me to remove the graphics card again in order to install my new RAM. Needless to say, this close call made me quite nervous. The GeForce literally could not have been any larger. If it had been, I would have wasted some serious cash.

Anyway, after I got everything finally secured into place, I closed everything up and plugged in the computer. The difference is like night and day. Suddenly I feel like it's capable of doing what I want it to do. Logically, the first thing I did was install Call of Duty 4 to test out the new graphics card...

Wow.

It handled the game with flying colors. All options set to their absolute maximum, no problems at all. I couldn't believe this horribly shitty PC was capable of being upgraded to smoothly. Before the upgrade, it could only play relatively old games at their lowest settings. And it did that in quite a shitty fashion.

So now I'm looking into new processors. That is the last thing on my list. Hopefully fairly soon I will be able to run games like Crysis and GTAIV smoothly at the higher settings. It's been so long since I bought a new game console or had up-to-date equipment that I didn't quite realize just how far gaming had come in the last few years. I have been blown away by the graphics, much like when I was 9 years old after plugging the N64 I bought with lawn mowing money for the first time.

Free shit for your computer.

Hey friends, I thought I'd share a bunch of computer applications that are 100% free and do what a lot of paid programs do.


AVG Anti-Virus 8 - This anti-virus program is the shit, and it's free. It's all I use on my computer and I never have any threats.

Audacity - Free open-source audio editor. You can do all sorts of stuff to your music with this, including enhancement, conversion from one filetype to another, removing lyrics, and more.

Media Player Classic - This looks like an old version of Windows Media Player but don't let its plain appearance fool you. This media player will play ANY video/audio file you can throw at it, including YouTube FLV files and DVD's. Not only that, but it's nice and compact, and uses very little memory.

VLC Media Player - Similar to Media Player Classic, with a few differences. Personally, I prefer MPC but this will also play almost anything you can think of.

OpenOffice.org - This set of office programs is an open-source clone of Microsoft Office. You can do pretty much everything you can with Office, only this is completely 100% free. It includes clones of Word, Excel, Access, and Powerpoint. It can also open all Office documents such as Word files (.DOC) and save to them as well.

Pidgin - an IM client that can run AIM, MSN, Yahoo, IRC, ICQ, and many others all at the same time. It's nice and simple, fast, and streamlined and I love it. This is what I use.

Trillian - Same kind of program as Pidgin. Also awesome, though I prefer the speed of Pidgin. Trillian, however, is more customizable.

Ubuntu Linux - If you are sick of Windows, this open-source OS is a free alternative with a lot of cool features. Definitely worth checking out for more advanced users.

Mozilla Firefox - If you don't use this already, or know about it, we have problems. Web browser that blows the shit out of Internet Explorer. Version 3 just came out.

Opera - Another great web browser. The new version looks really nice, but I still prefer Firefox.

Oovoo - A really cool IM client that focuses on webcam and audio chats over text chats (though you can still use text like any other IM client). I use this a lot and it's great. You can also call telephones from it, and for 15 bucks a month, you get unlimited minutes. It works pretty nicely as a replacement for a phone when you're at home.


So there you have it, free programs for you to have. Enjoy, lawl.