New Computer

[Cheerful Charlie]

I finally broke down and bought a new computer. This is a Beelink mini-pc. It has a Ryzen 7 CPU, 8 cores, 16 threads. Boots from a NVME ssd. It can take up to 64 GB memory. It is small. About 6 inches square. Think of a laptop minus keyboard and screen. I can add up to a 2 TB NVME SSD and a 2 TB SSD. It outputs HDMI. $369 with tax. It can take 2 32 GB SODIMM memory modules, $64 each.

My old system is old, down now with a bad cpu cooler, and some dead onboard stuff, now relying on add in ethernet and USB 3 boards to run. I will later get a new CPU cooler and run it as a backup machine.

Now the pain, setting it all up and getting it humming real perty like. It comes with Ubuntu installed.
Downsides, no CD. So no ripping CDs. And it is UEFI, so I have to get used to doing that.

But I can get rid of the Tablet I am now using. Android is not a happy system. This is my birthday present to myself.

 

[ZiprHead]

Happy birthday.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

You can get this, which will give you a drive. It isn't cheap, but if you want to rip, there are no alternatives really. I have an "older" version that has worked quite well with my driveless laptop. Just get the driver download so you can adjust the speed for ripping.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

A USB DVD writer can be had for about $25. But I am about to also get a new CPU cooler to resurrect my old system. And I have an old Dell with a dead hard disk. It has only 4 GB memory. 8 Gb, all it can take is $20. A 500 GB SSD is $50. Abackup to the backup.

NVME SSDs are now cheap. $60 FOR 1 TB.