appreciating newer technology

For the past few weeks, my newer system has been down due to the IDE/SATA drive controller going out. It would not recognize any drive of any sort. In the meantime since I have no temporary usage LGA775 motherboard, I have been limited to my older AthlonXP system (SocketA XP3000+, 1GB DDR400, ATI 9600XT, 160GB PATA drive, A7N8X board).

I have been getting back into CS:S lately which still plays well on this aged system although I do miss the DX9 effects. Using the DX8.1 level, I still see 60-80 fps which in itself is not bad. Even with normal everyday programs, I notice it has to work harder to display the same info on media based websites and runs much slower on the same programs when compared to my E6600 system.

The system is still very strong and runs well but when you have gotten used to dual cores with 2GB of RAM and games with higher quality scenery, this starts to feel nostalgic with each passing day... as if I was playing an Atari 2600 again.

Both systems use XP but it is just the realization that even normal web usage is starting to suffer and run slower than ever on the older machines. Simple things like flash and java end up freezing the browser for a minute or so and even embedded active content can cause the browser to feel laggy.

This has helped give me perspective on where technology has advanced on even normal computer usage. You start to see how the SATA drive really does help with file access times, and how 2 or 3 small jumps in video card technology really does have a large difference. Of course nowadays my newer system is still behind the times. With an aged ATI X1950GT, I am being left behind by the newer 8800 and 9x00 nvidia cards and the 38x0 ATI cards...

Oh well hopefully the money fairy will drop by and let me pickup a quad core and a 8800GT or 3850/70 someday in the near future...