[GTALUG] Build critique request and the story behind it.

[Russell]

On November 17, 2017 1:58:04 PM EST, lsorense at csclub.uwaterloo.ca wrote:
>On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 09:43:43AM -0500, Russell wrote:
>> Thanks, I'm sold. I hadn't fully considered forward compatibility in
>respect of the display. The improved features justify the new price
>point. Although I'm a little  wary of the Realtek S1220A codec. There
>is kernel support for it in 4.11 and people have made it work. It does
>have an integrated preamp and pop filter, that works for me  
>
>Yeah I guess it gains SPDIF connector, a pair of 10Gbps USB 3.1 gen
>2 ports, 2 more SATA connectors internally (I can never have too many
>of those).  Loses the PS/2 port although I sure didn't use that for

Given some of the issues with stiching together HID USB endpoint buffers, I considered maintaining that port outside the bottleneck to be a sound policy. I break it now only because I have a better grasp of handling fine grained USB Endpoint descriptors than I did a couple of years ago. 

>years myself.  Also has a couple of extra audio jacks (Do they have
>like
>8 channel output or something?).  I see it also has the header for

Yep 8ch / 7.1 surround output. Also impedance sensing output jack's and a task switching mic input. Rather than add an extra output for the .1 subwoofer, you switch the mike to audio out. You wouldn't use a live mic with all that sound, so why not re-task it. They've also placed input and output channels on separate layers and conditioned voltage input.

It will be interesting to see if Jack or Pulse audio will add the mic switch to their packages or leave that for the end user.

>thunderbolt if you ever want to add a thunderbolt card.  The -P didn't
>support that either.  Actually not bad for the extra $44.

I haven't done a detailed comparison feature by feature but at this point, at value, the $44 is not extra. I have done a bit of contracting and every contractor has to build in some wiggle room, but also hit the bid mark. I set my bid mark based on the price I paid for the only preassembled computer I ever bought for myself. Including the external Rockwell modem, capable of 56k, it was a tad over $1100 for everything. (i586 4mg ram etc.) That was 1994 dollars. I set the same value in today's dollars and went from there.
>
>Looks like a nice machine.  Mine are starting to look a bit dated I
>think.

<forrest>
Dated is as dated does, as my mama use-ta say.
</forrest>

It's a feature rich world out there. Sometimes it's hard to see the forrest for the trees. I think we all like to keep hardware costs to a minimum. I sort my priorities into the have to haves and the nice to haves. 

It was nice to have your help with this.

Cheers
-- 
Russell