I lost my Internets again. DSL signal just disappeared for no reason. I first thought it was my old modem which had been acting funny for a while, but I tried a brand new one and I’m still not getting anything. My guess is some idiot at E-leven pulled a plug he shouldn’t have pulled. It’s either that or they think I haven’t paid, but that would surprise me because besides the fact that I have paid, you’d expect them to send at least one warning before cutting people off.

I’ve been trying to get in touch with the store since yesterday, but they were “exceptionally closed” and it looks like they are too today. The central helpdesk thing either gives you a busy tone or just tells you they’re off to lunch, and even if I managed to get through, I doubt they’d be very efficient.

So consider yourself warned. E-leven is FAST (up to 2MB/sec where I live), E-leven is CHEAP (30€ per month, 40€ if you want unlimited download), E-leven’s download limit is hueg (30GB, I think, but I’m unlimited anyway), but when they screw up, they screw up big time and the tech support is nothing short of disastrous. I had to wait three months before they first got it to work, this time they better fucking fix it before the end of the week.

So I’m going to try to contact them again. Wish me luck. I might not keep you posted. No Internets, you see…

EDIT: They’ve been experiencing “technical difficulties” on the whole network since yesterday. An Internet provider that isn’t capable of providing Internet? I can understand a downtime of a few minutes, I could live with a downtime of a few hours (not too many, though), but a downtime that lasts days?

I tried installing Ubuntu on this new PC a few weeks ago, but apparently my graphics card (and possibly some other pieces of hardware) wasn’t supported and I eventually ended up in an endless reboot loop, so I gave up and decided to wait for the next Ubuntu version.
The next version was released today, and some of you (Cairn, for one) will be happy to know I’m writing this post in Ubuntu right now. Ubuntu installed flawlessly, feels intuitive and looks spiffy. However, it’s still far from perfect.

Why’s that?
I have no sound. There appears to be no way whatsoever to get an Auzentech Prelude 7.1 soundcard to work under Linux. OSS drivers sounded promising, but they don’t support this card either. And since I had intended to use Ubuntu for everything but gaming (and possibly gaming too, if Wine exceeded my expectations), and since everything but gaming basically means music and movies, well, this obviously won’t do. I could switch to on-board audio, but that would mean bypassing (almost) 200€ of hardware. And believe it or not, there really is a significant difference in quality between on-board audio and the Prelude.
Auzentech are currently working on Linux drivers, but they’re scheduled for Q4 2008, in other words, I may be stuck with this problem for a long time.

So for now I can just crawl behind my computer and switch the speaker cables from the Prelude to the on-board audio every time I want to use Linux, but this sucks major balls, especially since I was seriously considering getting real (cheap-ish) hi-fi speakers and using my PC to serve music through my Prelude. On-board audio just won’t do for that.

I know you can’t blame Ubuntu developers for 3rd-party drivers that just aren’t there, but this really may be a dealbreaker for me.

P.S.: the font of my blog is almost unreadable in Ubuntu. Am I the only one having this problem or have I been torturing Linux users all these years?

I could have told your this a week ago, but I was too busy testing out my brand new PC.

So yes, I finally got all the parts and I managed to build my system and get it to work on first try. After half a dozen calls, a formal complaint via e-mail and a call from the PC store, the postal services finally delivered the package on Friday, eight days later than they should have. But at least they delivered. I still hadn’t received my CPU cooler or my audio card, but I decided to start building anyway using on-board audio and the Intel stock cooler.

It’s pretty scary when you unpack the motherboard and the PSU and see all those colorful and tiny cables you have no idea what to do with. The motherboard manual, the case manual and the PSU manual all described the building process in slightly different ways so I decided to go with my gut feeling and that seemed to go rather well. The hardest part was fitting those damn front panel connectors. They’re tiny, they all look alike and they have positive and negative pins which require precision, but these pins are located at the side of the board where you don’t have any room to navigate and where everything’s hidden by the case so you can’t even tell what you’re doing. I managed, though. The P182 case has these handy hard drive compartments you can slide out of the case and mount separately, which was handy, and there’s also room for cables behind the motherboard so you don’t get all the cable clutter potentially blocking your fans. It’s a neat case, it looks all smooth and black, but it’s fucking heavy, which I guess is the only negative thing I can say about it.
The rest of the building process was relatively easy. I just plugged everything in, turned on the power, wished for a miracle and hurray, nothing exploded, everything worked. The software part wasn’t hard at all. For now, I installed Vista Ultimate x64 which has given me no problems whatsoever (yet) and which so far is not worse than XP no matter what people say. The UAC thing does make your feel like you’re being considered an idiot, though, so since after years of Windows-experience I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, I just decided to shut it off so it’d shut the fuck up. I haven’t had any annoyances or driver problems since. I’m still thinking about installing some flavor of Linux at some point, but I’m sorting other things out first.

Coincidentally, one week after I finished building, the postman came by with that other package that went missing for a month (the audio card and CPU cooler). I plugged in the audio card right away (the difference is very much noticeable, hurray for high-def audio) but I’m going to wait a while before replacing the CPU cooler. Apparently I’d need to take out the motherboard to mount it, meaning I’d basically have to start all over again. I just don’t feel like reconnecting all those tiny cables again.

Performance-wise, I can finally run Bioshock (very) smoothly, even at 1920×1200 resolution with all options maxed out \o/ I can also play strategy games like Company of Heroes or World in Conflict without getting frustrated because I can’t aim my cursor straight because of the low framerates \o/ I can even run Crysis (which came with my graphics card) on higher settings at 1920×1200, though it brings my PC down to its knees in some places (though from what I gather, no PC in the world can run Crysis on max settings smoothly yet, so I’m not worried). (A Crysis review may follow shortly since I finished it today.) Oh, and Neverwinter Nights doesn’t feel so fucking horrible anymore.
I can also watch high definition porn movies without any problems now. On my old PC I had to limit myself to 720p, and even then some movies wouldn’t run. Coolness.

Conclusion: my new PC is awesome.

So Taxipost were ‘quick’. They dropped by to trade in the package last Saturday, only they forgot to ask if I was even available and I was in France. So they left a note telling me to call back for a second delivery. We made an appointment for Wednesday (because Monday or Tuesday was too soon, apparently), so when they hadn’t come by 10am on said Wednesday, I skipped class because I couldn’t afford to miss them. Only by 7pm (when they stop working) they still hadn’t come.

I mean what the FUCK is the point of an appointment if they don’t even show up? I stayed in and nobody came (tantric sex lol).

So I called them today and after many tries I actually managed to reach someone. They said “we’ll have the appropriate service call you back”. I’m still waiting.

If everything had gone according to plan I would have been building my new PC right now.
I decided to go with the Dual Core E8400 processor after all, because I’m cheap like that and because I was tired of waiting, so technically when the postman came today he should have brought me the final part of my system. However, he didn’t. He did come, but he brought me someone else’s order, which means I now have a perfectly useless external harddrive and no processor. Hah. The store of course promised me it would all be resolved quickly. I just hope their definition of quickly is the same as mine.

And that’s not all. I ordered two other items from an online store in Dutchieland (the soundcard and the CPU cooler, which luckily aren’t essential). They shipped it out quickly and efficiently, only these items never even fucking arrived. The “TNT Post”s tracking system tells me the items have been delivered, which normally means somebody signed for them, only it wasn’t me. I have no idea if this is a screwup on TNT’s part or if it’s actually someone who stole the package, but I’m pretty pissed. The Dutchie hardware store’s people have been very friendly and helpful (they immediately started an investigation and asked TNT for the signature), only they can’t do much more than nag at TNT until they decide to move their collective asses, but that doesn’t seem to be working too well. It’s been a week since the package was supposedly delivered, and I still have no idea where it is.

What’s funny is that both stores (Azerty.nl and ITware.be) are supposed to be trustworthy and awesome. Bad luck?

Anyway, at least the actual specs of my PC are fixed now:

• Antec Performance One P182 case
• Corsair VX550W PSU
• Gigabyte P35C-DS3R motherboard
• 4GB of Corsair TWIN2X 6400C5DHX DDR2 RAM (decided to go with this 1.8V RAM instead of OCZ’s 2.2V memory, because I’ve been told the system won’t even boot until you change the voltage in the BIOS, and how are you supposed to do that if it doesn’t boot? Getting a stick of cheap 1.8V memory would have solved this problem, but I figured I didn’t need fancy overclocker’s memory anyway)
• Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0Ghz CPU (I decided I’d rather spend less now and upgrade 18 months from now than spend more now and upgrade 20 months from now)
• Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme (too many superlatives!!11 other than that, it’s the best and it wasn’t expensive)
• EVGA Geforce 8800GT 512MB Superclocked (because it was one of the cheaper GTs, because it was overclocked and because it included Crysis)
• 2x Western Digital 500GB HDD
• Samsung S203P DVD-burner
• Auzentech Prelude 7.1 soundcard

As you can see, no Blu-Ray yet. Now HD-DVD is dead and buried it’s only a matter of time before manufacturers start dropping prices on the drives, so I’m waiting for that moment. The screen is still a IIyama B2403WS 24″ widescreen and it’s still awesome (though occasionally there’s a pixel that gets stuck to red), the keyboard is a Logitech Media Keyboard 600 and the mouse is a Logitech MX400 laser mouse, which I already had before. The speakers are still the same, too. If I ever invest in new speakers, they won’t be PC speakers.

Total price: 1849,45€ (incl. screen)

P.S.: I guess it’s only fair that I mention the one reseller that did live up to my expectations and even surpassed them: Komplett.be. Very competitive prices, good communication and extremely fast. The only thing I could complain about is that their stock is still too limited. I mean, they sell tons of great stuff and that’s exactly why it’s a bit disappointing when they don’t have exactly the item you were looking for (if they’d had the Thermalright cooler and the Auzentech soundcard I wouldn’t have had to worry about that lost package O\__/O). Still, as far as I know this is the best store in Belgium.