I’ve used the ‘My Computer’ title to remind me of my one and only illegitimate version of Windows (XP). For my 21st birthday, my parents bought me a P4 2.67GHz, 533 MHz FSB, 512MB RAM system, built by a dodgy computer shop on Grand Boulevarde in Joondalup. The business owner was a few ethical practices short of a reputable business, and handed me Windows XP on a burnt disc with a serial number scribbled on it in Artline texta, when I quizzed him about my OS software. The serial number worked for 4 years until MS flagged my OS as a pirated copy whilst performing some automated Windows updates. In case you’re wondering, the computer shop is no longer in operation. A workmate of mine at the time was helpful in providing me with a trusty old WGA patcher. After all these years, and the development of some moral standards, I thought I’d escape the world of magical number generators, hacking, cracking, patching, system restore points and disabling Windows updates.
The pricing incentive to purchase an OEM version of Windows 7 was just too hard to resist. Another incentive was my expiry of the Release Candidate I installed 6 months ago. I must hand it to Microsoft, Windows 7 is pretty good. However, I never did understand the resentment of Vista. Some people are scared of change, when in reality, the only thing in this world that’s constant is change. The purchase and installation of a 1TB HDD has allowed me to not only install Windows 7, but setup a Linux partition too. Enter Ubuntu; this thing is an absolute breeze to install and configure using Wubi, there’s no excuse to not run a Linux based OS on your computer (unless your constrained to a pissy little 80GB HDD). I have even skinned Ubuntu to look like Leopard OSX! Upon finishing the skinning, I realised that I was using Apple products before the majority of computer users knew what the hell a Mac was.
1987: I was brought up using Apple products, the first computer Dad ever carted home was a 512K ‘Fat Mac’ I played a monochrome version of Dark Castle on:
512K 'Fat Mac' Macintosh
1992: The second being the mighty Mac Classic THAT HAD AN 8MB HDD! I used to play monochrome MacCricket and King’s Bounty on this one, both games used to crash on the old 512K. In its later life, I hacked the hell out of this machine with custom sound themes and even installed a JPG viewer! The images took around 30 seconds to render and were displayed in monochrome of course.
Macintosh Classic
1997: The third actually had a colour screen that I could play Doom II, Rebel Assault II, discover the Internet and the usual things that curious teenaged boys go looking for!
Macinstosh Performa 5600
In between these fantastic works of art and science, I subjected myself to an old Intellivision, a Commodore 64 with a dodgy SID chip (sold to my parents by my Uncle…), Nintendo gaming consoles, a borrowed 486 and a Pentium 1.
Acquainting myself with an iPhone was a step back in time for me, returning me to my roots of Mac use. I’m getting a bit too nostalgic here for my own good… I digress.
Ubuntu rocks! I have combined my favourite elements of Mac, PC and Linux operating systems in this Ubuntu installation.
- Emulating the OSX dock with Avant Window Navigator.
- Using GNOME-PANEL for ease of menu use at the top of the screen.
- XFCE because its themes are the cleanest Linux themes I have seen, not to mention very lightweight.
- XFCE because of its awesome transparency support and kick arse effects such as 3D windows, window decorations, fading windows, cube gears, Compiz I could go on and on!
- I need to mention, all aspects are completely customisable via the terminal and once installed, have interfaces for you to click checkboxes and install themes, etc.
My only gripe in regards to my new machine is the fact that Windows 7 wont talk to my iPhone because of an Intel P55 chipset issue but apart from that, this new setup is awesome.
I was destined to work with computers… despite getting a D for computing in year 10 🙂
