I read alot of other blogs, one of which is Scott Hanselman's blog.  After reading hist post about his amazon.com wish list I decided top post a link to my Amazon.com Wish List. 



I put almost everything on my amazon.com wish list and updated it every few weeks, things come and go but some items have been on there for years. 

Post a link to your amazon.com wish list...

I bought my first house last year, April 2005, which was one of the happiest days of my life.  Since October 2005 it has been all down hill.  2 break-ins and 1 attempted break-in have driven me to the point of putting the house up for sale. 

The first break-in happend in Oct 2005, they broke down my back door while I was at work and took everything they wanted.  New steel back door was installed, alarm system and a few other changes.

In November 2005 someone tried to pry my garage door open.  Got home to find one garage door 1/8th open, nothing was taken.  One garage door is old and doesn't work, so it is now bolted and nailed shut, got new door on other side of garage.

Saturday August 19th, 2006 at 11:45pm while I was playing Wow and my girlfriend was half asleep in bed, we had another break-in.  The alarm went off, 30 seconds entry alarm, and we both got up to see what was going on, found that the front door was now open and unlocked.  Called police and had then search the house, only found alot of DVD's missing, but no signs of forced entry according to the police.  Figure we left front door unlock, Monday morning I scheduled a locksmith to come out, change front lock.  Was doing a few other things around house when I found out they had actually broke in via a basement window.  The basement window was by the A/C so I figure that is why I couldn't hear it.  Completely destroyed the window, I almost had a heart attacking find the window gone.  The police didn't even notice and for 2 days my house had been completely open.  Called police and they really don't care.  However broke in, had to be more then 1 person, had free run of the house while both me and my girlfriend where home, even with lights on in front/back and light on all three floors, someone was still willing to break in.  

 

Just an XPS 700 update.

After just over a week with my new Dell XPS 700, I would have to give it a 9.5/10.  System is very stable(except on nvidia beta drivers), quiet, and fast.  Tried the 91.33 Beta drivers from Nvidia(only drivers from nVidia that support 7900GS) and they work fine with World of Warcraft, but oblivion and Half Life 2 crash periodially after installing them.  Rolled back to 81.40 from Dell Drivers and no crashes since. 

Have also "solved" the power button issue.  Someone from the Dell forums posted a quick "how to" on the xps 700's power button.  Basically don't press in on the button, you actually put you finger just under the button and push upwords.  The button works perfectly this way. 

Also figured out my usb flash drive issue, the 13 in 1 media reader maps itself to F,G,H,I driver, and both my flash drives where trying to re-use F when I plugged them in.  Change the 13 in 1 reader to map to M,N,O,P and drives started working. 

My XPS 700

7/27 PC Pictures - Taken with Camera Phone, sorry about Blurryness

7/28 PC Pictures - Taken with real Digital Camera, still some poor lighting but betting pics.

Took almost 2 months to get but now the question on everyones mind is "Was it worth it?".  First impression where very good, this pc looks sharp.  Weighting in at 71 pounds was a bit of a supprise, have had many pc's in my time, don't think any of them where ever over 50 pounds.  Any I have had aluminum ones before, but after looking inside you can see where all the weight comes from. 

First boot up was smooth, but was a little disappointed that the desktop was 1/2 full junk software.  Isn't this something Dell was saying they would quit doing to XPS customers?  After uninstalling a number of apps I was told about a great tool pc-de-crapifier , which greatly help and removed the rest of the junk.  After removing the majority of the junk I quickly began the install of World of Warcraft, which I play 4+ hour a night 5+ days a week.  Decided to see if it would really multi-task for I lauched the oblivion installer, it didn't seem to mind, so started downloading wow 1.11 patch in the background.  This pc never skipped a beat.   No errors during installed, no (not respondings), all this while still replying to post on dell forums about my new xps. 

World of Warcraft
First thing I did was turn all the setting up and turn the (adjust my setting dynamicly) off.   Restarted and was amazed at the way the game now looked, had never been able to run with all the graph setting turned up, most where at 50% or 0,   My character was in IF(Ironforge) aka lagforge and I figured this would be a good place to test my fps.  Ran out in front of the bank in IF and was amazed to see the fps between 45 and 64.  After drooling for awhile I decided to get in a few fights, see if it effected things.  After a few duals in front of IF, I was drooling again.  It seemed to be stuck of 60 fps.  Almost didn't go to work the next day, wanted to play so bad...

Oblivion
My oblivion settings on my old pc where medium with a few adjustments but it looked good and played ok.  When I first clicked the oblivion icon it alerted me that my settings where set to "ultra high".  I had a previous saved game that was just outside the beginning sewers, so I loaded it up.  WOW, finally my screen looked amazing, but what about the fps?  Never got about 42fps and it dropped to low 20's a few time, but the game seemed to play very smooth thou.  My old pc was lucky to get 15fps. 

A few Oblivion Screen Shots 

Half Life 2
Well would love to tell you this ran great, but steam kept me from playing.  I hate steam.

Fear
Didn't install it yet, sorry, was having funny in Oblivion.

Benchmarks

   Ran some basic benchmarking via Sandra Lite 2007 , looks like my 950 3.4 falls just short of the 2600 Core 2 Duo.  Also some benchmark and hardware scans. 

CPUZ

Ran cpuz per users request.  http://www.droppedatbirth.com/cpuz.htm

Case Size

• 23" deep
  9" wide
  22" High w/o stand
  23" High w/ stand

Issues I have had so far

1. Will not read my Iomega 128mb usb drive, it sees it but says invalid drive.  Tried front and back usb's.
2. Drivers for video where 80.40 Dell Video drivers.  Current stable Nvidia driver don't support 7900GS, but betas do, I haven't installed them but downloaded them and ran installer to 1/2 point, appear is will install them.
3. Power button is stiff, you have to push it pretty firm to power box up, you have a 50% chance the button will fall off, its just clipped on the back side of the grill.  Luckily the case is very easy to open and with all the leds you can see without having to turn on the lights. 
4. 13 in 1 drive is lose and moving around, have tried to tighten it up but it still moves around.  

Pros

•  This PC is quite, played Oblivion for 2 hours, never heard any big fan coming on or anything.
•  SLI 7900's work great, games are incredible fast
•  This PC is beautiful
•  Cooling - My Dell 8300 was a heat pump, even idel it was pumping out heat like crazy.  My new XPS doesn't put out huge amounts of heat, great cooling.
•  Seems Very Stable

Cons 

•  Didn't Get Core 2 upgrade, looks like my 950 3.4 is about the same speed as a Core 2 3000, but the Core 2 is a bit faster.
•  2 months of waiting
•  This thing is huge and heavy PC
•  USB drive issues(Minor)
•  Dell Drivers on Video(Might be fixed with Beta Drivers)
•  Still Junk software on box
   

Verdict.

 I love this pc, might look into core 2 in a few months depending on more benchmarks and price but for now, this will due just fine.  Still not happy with the way Dell has treated its customers, If I would have been able to cancel my order like I tried last week, I would be an Ex-Dell customer building a custom box instead.  But since I did get it and it is what I wanted, a true gaming rig.  I would have to give it a 4 1/2 out of 5. 
 

Found out today that my machine was finally built this weekend, thats why I couldn't cancel it.  Sounds like I may be receiving the first xps 700 to finally ship.  Status of my order status finally reflects this.  Will see if it really arrives in 2 days.

 

I decided about 2 months ago that is was finally time for a new pc.  My current home pc is behind the times and in recent months has had issues.  After some shopping around I decided to go with a dell xps 600.  My last 3 home pc's and personal laptop where dells, I was always happy with dells stability and performance. 

After gather my requirements for my new dells configuration I found out that I could order thru work and get a corporate discount.  After getting a quote of the price with my corporate discount I ran into issues getting the order off the ground.  So on June 2nd I decided to order it myself and forgo the corporate discount, but I as went online to order I found dell has finally released there xps 700's.  I immediately respected my order and submitted my xps 700 order on June 2nd.  At the time there was a 3 week lead-time. 

A few days later I found out I could order directly thru out corporate rep, so after getting a new xps 700 quote, I cancelled my June 2nd order and got a new order submitted on June 16th.  The good part was I was now getting my xps 700 with a corporate discount, but the lead time was now 5 weeks.  I figured that was fine, was saving good money and getting a great new gaming pc. 

My order was supposed to ship July 25th, but I noticed on July 19th that my order status still said it was in processing.  I chatted with dell customer service and all I got was "the order is delayed due to parts", and "those systems aren't available yet", no real answers.  I contacted my company's dell rep to see if they had a real answer. 

On July 20th, I found a dell blog that had details of what was going on but still no real answers.  I now know I would not be getting a new pc this month either, but still had no clue as to when I would get my order.  The only good news was, in theory, anyone who ordered before June 20th would be getting an upgrade to an Intel core 2 duo processor, but no word of when this would happen or when I would get my computer. 

On July 23rd I finally heard from our dell rep and was told I would get an upgrade the core 2 but they had no idea when.  All I was told was it would be at least the end of August. 

I had waited long enough, I was tired of the lies and bull shit from dell and was ready to cancel.  I spent an hour and a half on the phone with dells customer service in India.  Got hung up on once, and was transferred over and over.  No one could cancel my order.  I ended up just sending another email to our dell rep and tell them to just cancel my order.  I was tired of all the lies and felt I was not getting a good and fair deal anymore. 

Dell has lost me as a customer.  Dell has forgotten there is a customer on the other end of the order number.  

I recently decided to relocate my computer room in my house to a small bedroom.  The room has a great view of my yard and the front of the house.  The move should have been easy, move desk, move computer, and assorted office junk to new room.  I began moving the computer today after getting the room setup with furniture.  After playing "which cord is this" game I move the last few pieces into my new computer room.  One of these last pieces was my pc, which I dropped as I was walking down the hall. 

I couldn't believe what I did; I must have stood there for 10 minutes contemplating what I did.  I proceeded to pick up the pc, now in 2 pieces and started the task of finding out what I broke.

I plugged in all the basics, figuring it would be pointless to plug in everything since I know something would be broke.  Started the pc up and no hd's found.  Ok, that's not good.  The wonderful sounds of the death click was coming from one hard drive, the other hard drive was running.  I removed the hard drive that was clicking and tried again, amazingly the machine booted.  Got a load of errors and windows finally came up.  My pc normally has 2 hard drives and 2 cd-roms.  One hard drive was now removed but only one cd-rom was showing up in explorer.  After playing with my dvd-rw drive for a few minutes I determine it was gone, powers up but, nothing works, won't eject.  The other drive will read a disc but sounds like its eating it, guessing that one is dead too.  The drive that was click was my personal drive, which is not good.  My personal drive has everything 10 years of my life, pictures, games, documents, applications, financial data, a lot of data was gone.  

Of course most people are going to ask/say he obvious, "So you have a backup right?" umm no.  I have never lost a hard drive; I have had ones start to go bad and lost some data but never everything.  My personal drive as 120g of data on a 200g drive, 40g of music, 20-30g of pictures, 10g of old projects, 30+g of apps and other misc data. 
I started to make a list of what was gone and I can't believe what I lost.  I guess I have learned my lesson.