I'm currently on putting the finishing touches on my new computer.  I used the excellent guides provided by Jeff Atwood (Parts I, II, III, and IV) and some, albeit severely diminished, historical knowledge to build the PC from components.  A few weeks ago I posed the question of dual-core or quad-core.  Jeff left a comment on the post:

"Do you *really* expect to be using this same machine 2 to 4 years from now?

I think that's a stretch.. buy for the next year, and let the future sort itself out later. You always end up upgrading the mobo / memory / CPU together anyway."

Though his comments carry a lot of weight, I decided to not heed Jeff's advice and to run with the quad-core processor.  As much as I hope to buy new hardware more often, my own history would prove otherwise.  I simply don't buy new hardware that often, despite Jeff's warning.

There is one other reason I opted for the quad-core.  I want to set this PC up to use virtual machines for development.  I was bitten last week by having Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 installed on the same machine.  In a virtual environment I could have a 2005 virtual machine and a 2008 virtual machine.  Having four cores then allows me to assign a virtual PC to run on specified cores.

Will the choice to go quad-core pay off?  We'll never know, cause I don't purchase hardware often enough to buy a dual-core to compare.  I'm curious about the drop in performance between a host machine and a virtual machine.  I ran some benchmarks on the new machine running Windows XP on the host and will run the same benchmarks with Windows XP running as a virtual machine.  I will report back when I have more data.

 

I really am quite suprised as I'm going through Bloglines and reading blogs by how few of them mention Thanksgiving.  I'm not sure quite why the lack of Thanksgiving buzz on the blogs, but I've been thinking a bit about what I'm thankful for, and I wanted to jot it down.

I'm thankful for:

• Sarah - Sarah is a wonderful wife.  People from the outside probably don't *get* us but that's ok, we get each other and it works great!  Together we make a great team and I consider myself lucky for having it that way.
  
• Lincoln's health - while I'm thankful for Lincoln, I'm more thankful at this point that he's healthy and developing well.  There's nothing like getting up in the morning and seeing him smile up at you from his crib.
• Hope and Vision - I'm going somewhere, I've got goals, however I was reminded again how easily I take those for granted while driving through a "not so nice neighborhood".  I thought to myself that day that if I lived in that neighborhood how easily it would be to lose my hopes and dreams.
• Health - Despite a raging Mt. Dew addiction, I remain in fairly good health.  Sure I'm heavier than when I was in my early twenties, but that's to be expected.  I still get to run on a semi-regular basis and I enjoy it.
• Work - I strongly feel that it's in a man's bones to work.  What makes it easier is that I enjoy my work.  I've worked at enough places that I don't care for to realize the last few places I've worked are wonderful.  I enjoy getting up and working at Geonetric.  Sure there are bad days, but usually there only bad because I care.  In fact I'm not the only one who likes Geonetric, it was recently voted best place to work in our area.
• Faith - I'm thankful for a higher power.  Despite my best attempts, I find that I'm rarely the example I should be.

What are you thankful for.  Whether you respond in comments or post on your blog in response, at the very take some time and think about what you're thankful for this season.

 

I'm on the cusp of purchasing parts for a new computer.  My mouse is hovering on the "Checkout" button on newegg.com.  As I'm going over the parts of my computer I'm agonizing over the choices I've made.  Most of the parts are inspired from lists that were put out by Scott Hanselman and his ultimate developer rig post as well as Jeff Atwood and his "Now It's Your Turn" post.

The question right now is Quad Core vs. Dual Core.  It's been questioned how much is really gained by going from two to four cores.  Graphs and benchmarks show that there isn't much to be gained right now with going to a Quad core.  Sure there isn't a difference now, but what about the future.  Multi-core systems are the norm now, but a few years ago that wasn't the case.  As programs start building for multi-core desktops I would imagine that more cores would be better.  So I'm curious, though a quad core machine today offers a neglible benefit, what about the future, two or even four years from now?

What do you think?

Tim