It’s back! The RMA process was painless and quick, although there was round-trip shipping involved. Congratulations to CyberPowerPC for that.
The new monitor, which has been sitting unpowered, just teasing me:
I had dual monitors. The white block in the middle is the full-screen size of one of them. I had thought 1920×1080 was a reasonably large monitor. I no longer do. I’m almost instantly spoiled.
The whole setup:
The case is significantly bigger than it needs to be, but it looks cool and there is space for it. RGB everything is a bit much. It came with a program to change the color patterns (as did the keyboard), but oscillating rainbow is fine – at least for now. If life were an Eighties movie, it would come to life, but I’m definitely not spilling anything into it to try to force the issue.
The environmentalists definitely got this one wrong. One of the reasons I bought it was out of spite: It’s illegal in Colorado. The old computer was on 24/7 – even though I usually only used it for nine or so hours per day – because it took SO LONG to boot that having it on when I wanted to use it was worth it. The new one boots in about 30 seconds, so turning it off is no big deal. It also seems to have a mostly-powered-down mode that it automatically descends into after some period of time. I couldn’t get the VPN installed today (fixed now – yay helpdesk!), so I was working on the old computer, when I turned around, most of the blinking lights weren’t. Hitting the shift key fired it right back up – 10 seconds at most.
I bought my first game: Skyrim. The graphics are great, but it won’t go over half-screen due to the aspect ratio. Thankfully, you can move it around. Putting it in the middle works great, but that’s why the Desktop background is black. Once I get my fingers gaming ready (what office drone – yes, that’s me – uses his left hand for up/down right/left?!?), I’ll try something a bit more active and multi-player. I’m also still making myself dizzy from “mouse moves your head/changes perspective”.
Next up: Audio decision. I only have headphones for this. But, the old USB Dell soundbar, which nicely attaches to the Dell monitor, could be duct-taped (a figure of speech – I’d use Velcro) behind this one, but there is a flat/curved alignment problem. I’ve also got 5.1 audio output, which would go nicely into the old Rotel amp and the Bose 901s are just sitting here. 1000 non-clipping watts per channel seems a bit much – and I’m sure The Laird would agree. But it would also look cool (speaking of the Eighties), so for the yet-to-be-built upstairs office desk, they’ll definitely be installed, even if I rarely actually use them.
Marked Up 