My $87 Big Black Dell Monolith has arrived.   It is current Intel 22nm technology throughout and it was a very late generation  Win 7 Pro box that was likely parked at an engineer's desk.

It is immaculate, scratch free, runs its one (1) very large very low speed fan practically silently.   I have tried to stress it so to speed the fan up for noise appraisal, but nothing I use can run its two 3.3 gigahertz processors up to max, even momentarily.

And yes, I lit everything on my Chrome favorites bar and started up each of the Office type programs that I use all at the same time -- I maxed out at 2.5 gigs of systems memory (out of 3.7 available) and only moved the processors up to into 3/4 of max range measured at the peaks.   And yes, the processors do take turns running heavy loads and yes Linux does multi-tasking just dandy (duh, Linux runs supercomputers with HUNDREDS of multi-tasking processors).

I bet an anti-virus program from the windows world would have pegged it, as would several of the MS Office products --- but I am Linux guy and HAVE no viruses to chase and I use Libre Office instead of MS Office.  

So I have the Linux equivalent of a big 'ol Alienware box jest a sitting there, running just off idle at my biggest task.   Ho-hum.

So, for less than the asking price of a 400 watt "upgrade" power supply for my busted box I have me a new black monolith that is running a fast SSD augmented hard drive that is (using Linux) never going to require defragging or any form of "weekly/monthly maintenance" type attention like you have to do to your Windows box.

Except for vacuuming away the dust bunnies from the front and back grill that is .....



Note to self:   Vacuum the big black Monolith off front and back with the little brush attachment every time you suck the carpet in the PC room.


  .... the   green magnificence   is back and I am all happy again.

That picture takes me back to a scene from my childhood.  Neighbors had dug up a (septic tank ?),(cesspool?) with a backhoe. 1982 or 1983 or so.   We were about 8 or 9, standing there watching.  It STUNK!.  I remember there were these weird blackish frogs in it.  My friend's black lab loved to swim, so she decided to take a running leap into the disgusting stench, splattering us with revolting filth as we crouched there looking at the frogs ...

Good times!  kids don't get to experience stuff like that anymore

Also, I agree on linux.  I'm a total novice, but i've been running ubuntu for a year or so on a "dead" laptop - works fine for my purposes (email, web, word processing, etc.)

Art, you are no more going to run Linux than you would go ride the Dragon ......

..... hey, you DID go ride the Dragon  !!!!     Several times, as a matter of fact.


(there's hope for the boy yet)


Art, remember when I told you the brisket was good?    Did I lie to you then?          

Remember,  Linux Mint does taste better than a mouthful of sewage water.

How you can get a Linux "supercomputer" for $80

First, let's properly define the trick so you can understand it.

Around 2009-ish, Intel was speeding up the megahertz in their Core 2 Duo line up and up and up and adding in multiple massive multi-threading "multi-pipeline" caches each of to the separate CPU data flows to allow what was functionally TWO computers to share workload in a trade off style fashion.   Nanometer was 45nm and the things were powerful, but in a rather brute force way.

Then Intel went 22nm and the quad core processor was born.   The Core 2 Duo designation hit the trash can with the 2nd year of 22nm production and the Core i3 and Core i5 designations took over.    Dual Cores were still being built off the modern 22nm process, but they were considered a "step down" line now.   Chip speed went up during this period, up to 3.3 gigahertz in the Core 2 Duo stuff and remained 3.3 to 4 gigahertz going forward.    

It is embarrassing, but the old dual core stuff routinely outperformed the Intel Quad core stuff in real world uses for the first 4 years (what can you say, it was Intel building chips that MS didn't know how to properly use yet).

However Dell as a MAJOR CUSTOMER liked the dual core stuff as they saw maximum real speed and power and lowest mgf cost being typified by the Core 2 duo design --- and Dell stuck with it in a big way for the next 4 years.

Dell business stuff is leased for 2, 4 and 8 years so you can see the vast sea of off-lease stuff just coming off lease is now 2-4 years more modern than my machine now, but my machine at 3.3 gigahertz running Linux Mint is still way past overbuilt for any rational need that I have.

THE KEY IS TO USE LINUX MINT, a much lighter faster operating system.   Win 7 Professional was only so-so fast on the Monolith, but Linux flat rocks when used on the old refurbished DELL boxes.

Secondary to getting better speed and power when using Linux, using MS's OS products is still an ongoing pain in the user's butt to update and upkeep, plus they will cost you more and more of your pocket money each year as they roll out into the future as MS plans to use a yearly fee system so they will "do upkeep" on your MS OS product.

Linux jest makes you smile each time you don't have to deal with updating your anti-virus and running repeated virus scans and defragging your hard drive.


    ..... and the world of Linux is free, as in costs nothing to acquire or to update.