Format

Its done. Something that I have waited to do for a year now. Format my Hard drive. And despite it taking 2 days (and counting...) it is/was worth it. Not only have I made the computer run smoother. I have reclaimed 25 gigs of wasted space. Thats right folks 25 big ones.

So that may not be entirely true as I still have about 6 gigs of personal files left to load back, which will put me just under 20. But that still means I have 30 gigs of free space... Which for me is amazing.

I thought it was time for a new hard drive, and still probably is, but now I can wait and save up a bit more for a bigger hard drive. However my sound card does not seem to work. So I do need to buy a new one of those ASAP! having to use my MP3 player for music isnt the best, as it sounds like crap on these speakers. It probably sounds crap on my headphones as well, but sitting on a bus you kinda dont care (it doesnt matter). This sound card only cost me $20, so I'm not exactly crying over its demise. Rather looking forward to some better sound quality. Especialy when watching DVD's, playing games and of course listening to music.

While I've been downloading drivers for various crap... I've been shopping around. Basicly I dont want to spend over $100. As the top end ones, which lots of shiney gold, THX, Firewire, Optical and DTS are in excess of $300. I have found 1 card thats in the $100 to $200, but considering its main purpose is going to be playing mp3's I doubt it will matter too much. However I dont want another crap sound card that:

1. Sounds Like crap
2. Breaks
3. Has no Drivers
4. Has no Drivers on the CD that work
5. Is so crap the Internet doesnt even have Drivers
6. [Generic Drivers for windows dont work for me for some reason]
7. Is a burden on the CPU
8. Sounds like crap

The format went relativly smoothly and from format to windows login was only 4 hours. I am not planning on Building a couple of disks with all the good stuff on them, so that I can get this kinda thing done withing a day.