I remember back in my first job, working on automotive electronics strategies, someone asked me “how small can a CD player be” and to me it was clear — size would be dominated by the media and the controls, not by the internal electronics.

When we started buying PCs and TVs and cellphones and other gadgets, their sizes were dominated by internal considerations — tubes and motherboards and drives and power supplies and electronics and antennas and all kinds of crud. And we are still in the last stages of this — desktop computers are still big boxy things, many laptops are big chunky things. But thanks to Moore’s law, the electronics are in the last stages of disappearing, and with them the big clunky power supplies, and awkward big antennas, spinning disks, etc. The gadgets we carry will have their sizes driven by human interaction needs, and those damn batteries (getting batteries down in size/weight is a hard problem).

Which is why I think questions like “Which will win, the Kindle or iPad”, or “Will the iPad replace notebooks” are ultimately not very interesting. When gadgets all are lightweight and no bigger than they have to be, and electronics are basically free, and connectivity is ubiquitous, you’ll carry all kinds of these things around or have them in your house and not worry about it, just like we never worried about books vs magazines vs newspapers.

Or maybe it is for the couch at home. But usually I again need to run real software. So what is this thing for?

So I only ordered one. 

• I still have to carry my iPhone around because I need to make calls. Actually the iPad could free me to switch to a better phone/carrier without having to lose my apps…
• I still have to carry my MacBook around. I use real software, Aperture and MatLab and Mathematica and Photoshop and Word. With big datasets, complicated docs, etc. The limited iPad apps don’t cut it.
• So am I really going to carry around another largish device? Hmm.
• I do carry the Kindle2 around but it is a lot smaller and I get 2-3 weeks of battery life. That is the beauty of a point device.

So I am not really sure what the iPad does for me. But I am sure I will try.

All the “Amazon is dead” talk I find misguided. A, if you are a heavy book reader, the iPad is not superior — battery life, library size, readability are all Kindle advantages. B, Amazon is not stupid, you can read Kindle books on the iPad. C, the Amazon store may not be as cute as Apple’s book thing but it is way more functional. Amazon will be fine even if the Kindle hardware fades away.

• Cases. Very different choices. Air cooling for both, we’ve had 3-4 liquid-cooled systems. Liquid cooling looks awesome with the right fluids and lights, but — another maintenance hassle; sometimes catastrophic failures; and they just aren’t any quieter really.
  • First system is an Antec 1200. Classic full tower case, tons of drive bays, tons of fans, full complement of front panel ports. Nice clear sides, some cool interior lighting. Nice looking final system, but a little time consuming to pull together — particularly all the cable connections for fans and front panel connectors. But looks nice complete.
  • Second system is built around a High Speed PC Tech Station. An open, “caseless” system, super easy and quick to assemble, and gives nice open access to all elements of the system. The finished product looks messy but that is part of the appeal. No protection from the elements either. Massively faster to assemble tho.
• Motherboards. The Antec has an ASUS P6X58D and this is a great board — USB3, SATA3, designed for overclockers. Probably should have gotten this board for both systems. The second has an ASRock X58 which is fine and a little cheaper but lacks the USB3 and SATA3 support. For the price-difference, probably should have goen with the more future-proof board. Both boards seem pretty equivalent otherwise.
• Processors. Intel i7-920 2.66Ghz quad-core on both. Not the most expensive but overclockable. On the first PC with the Antec case, we installed a higher capacity cooler for overclocking support — a noname generic cooler but something like this one that we picked up at a the local parts store.
• RAM. 6GB of Corsair Dominator Triple Channel ram (3×2GIG) on both systems. Pretty easy to install, tho absolutely no documentation on the fan, but there was really only one way to try to install it and it seemed to work.
• Power supplies. The Antec has an OCZ 1000W. This is a solid supply with tons of connectors, certainly good enough for nearly any system. But the Enermax Galaxy 1250W is super nice because of the modular cable system — you only attach the power connectors you actually need. Cuts down massively on cable clutter, particularly helpful for the caseless system. I’d go with modular supplies every time in the future.
• Hard drives. Both machines have 2 1.5TB WD Caviar drives, 7200 RPM. Nothing fancy, amazing how cheap drives have become. Considered faster drives but they contribute to noise and, based on past experience with 10K rpm drives, not clear they add that much performance.
• DVD/Blue Ray drives. Not having strong opinions on drive vendors (partly because I’ve had bad drives from every vendor in the past), we scattered out purchases around here. Both systems have the same bluray drive — an LG drive. One system then has a Samsung DVD burner, the other a Pioneer.
• Removeable media. Both systems have a 17-in-1 Sony memory card reader. Neither has a floppy, thank goodness Windows install doesn’t need that anymore.
• Video cards. OK we really wanted Radeon 5970s but these are mythical. The 5870s are near-mythical, almost like unicorns. But they are findable on ebay for near MSRP and that is the route we went. Expect to pay $500 or so. Standard ebay warnings apply — look for vendors with long selling histories, flawless reputations, US-based, etc. We had no problems. The caseless system also has a second card, a 5770, the goal is to be able to run directx games on one display while running other apps on the other card, I’m not convinced this is actually possible.
• Software. Win7 ultimate, from MS Company Store for $50. Worth renewing my alumni membership for this. Installed easily, 64bit on both. Unlike vista, this version really seems to work and driver software seems plentiful. The experience isn’t flawless — IE hung when downloading the latest ATI drivers and we had to use opera/chrome/firefox; and the homegroup network UI is ill-considered at best, the networking UI is basically awful. Inventing funky abstractions like homegroups and libraries isn’t that helpful, lipstick on a pig. I just want to see the machines and devices on my network as a first step, is that so hard?
• Other software. Opera, Chrome, Firefox, Acrobat, Steam (with COD4, L4D2), Zune, Office10Beta, FileZilla, Tunebite all installed fairly quickly.

Machines both running well and seem to be happy so far. What do we still want?

• SSD drives. Also near mythical, impossible to find. Will have to add these post holidays.
• 5970 video cards.
• A desktop power switch for the caseless system. With no case, there is no obvious power and reset button, just little switches on the motherboard. One idea is to switch to a PS2 keyboard and enable powerup from keyboard in the BIOS.

So the steps to replace and my tips:

• Unplug the PC! You don’t want to mess with live power or the residual power that may be lurking in your supply.
• Disconnect all the LAN, monitor, USB, SATA, Fireware, speaker, mike, etc cables. Remember what goes where! Sometimes I label the cables so I can remember. Oh and this guide to soundcard ports will help you down the line.
• Remove the side panels or case housing from the pc. You are going to end up with lots of loose screws — make sure you have a plastic bag or something to keep them in, and that you can remember what screw went where. For my PC case I had to remove the side panels and the top panel and I ended up with 4 big thumb screws for the side panels and 4 small machine screws for the top panel.
• Now that your case is open, you might as well vacuum it, you probably have accumulated a lot of dust. Make sure to get around the fans and all case seams. Oh and hopefully you followed the guidance in the previous step and bagged all your screws — there is nothing more annoying than vacuuming up all your loose screws accidentally.
• Unscrew the power supply. In my case I had to remove screws holding a decorative plate onto the rear of the supply, and remove the screws holding this plate to the case. Then the plate could be removed and the power supply could be easily slid around.
• Without disconnecting all the power cables in the case, lift out the power supply. Examine it to determine what wattage it is. In my case it was a 500W supply which seemed a little tiny for a tower machine with a good graphics card. Additionally, trace all the power cables leaving the supply and make an inventory of all the connectors you are using. This is probably overly anal, but you want to make sure your replacement supply has all the right connector types in the right quantity. Unless you have really maxed out your machine, you will probably not have a problem.
• OK this step is not necessary at all. But I wanted to confirm that my power supply was indeed the culprit. So i located the four small machine screws on the bottom and opened it up (voiding the warranty per the label). On examination of the interior, sure enough there was a charred capacitor that had scorched the board it was mounted on. Pretty obviously blown. Perhaps a braver soul than me would just try to replace the capacitor but this doesn’t seem smart to me.
• You know now the minimum connectors you need and the minimum wattage supply you need. Go to your local PC supply store (in my case Fry‘s) and buy a replacement. I went up to 700W and got a thermaltake. No idea if this is the best choice but Fry’s had a ton and the box was very descriptive about connectors supported. I was intrigued by the cable management series of power supplies which seems like to might reduce massively all the excess cabling in my PC but I need to learn more about.
• OK now replace cable by cable — disconnect the cable leading from the old supply to a port, and snake in and connect the cable from the new supply. I do this connection by connection so that I remember them all. And make sure you snake the new cables along the same path as the old, so that everything fits in when you eventually close the case up. And of course seat your connectors well, some of them need a bit of force (though if you have correctly aligned the connector it shouldn’t be that much force)
• Once all the cables are disconnected from the old power supply, put it aside. place the new power supply into the case on the rails where the old supply sat.
• Before reassembling the case, test! Re attach all accessory cables and attach your power cord and power up the system. Does it boot? Do all drives and accessories work? Hooray, ours did on the first try.
• Put the case back together
• Recycle the old supply

OK takes way more time than it should and it is an amazing mess of cables inside a PC case. Man it would be cool if there was a simpler power bus inside the case.