Oh Debbie · 27 October 2003
A single MP3 takes about five times as long to get as it does to play; a system update or a software release will, if you’re lucky, be there in the morning when you click it before bed; pages built with Flash or sludgy Javascript usually aren’t worth the bother. Anything urgent means a twenty minute drive to an internet shop where for money one can watch all sorts of copyright violations rain down at a half-gigabyte per hour.
The digital rural lifestyle, at 56k.
Some time ago France Telecom announced that every community with a hundred interested broadband subscribers would have ADSL brought to them. Months later the local mairie snapped into action by putting a petition on its reception desk. But in a village where the median age is about seventy, and where there are probably more tractors than computers, and where no one ever goes to the mairie, there was no mad rush to sign. So no broadband in the near future.
For ages I tried to get satellite to work, but the rates have always been ridiculous (consumption-wise, analogous to a hundred bucks for a bowl of tapwater), and while Macs could theoretically be configured to negotiate the VPN moat and drawbridge of satellite broadband, people were happy to point out that no one ever had.
Now, though, it seems rates are getting more affordable. Packages are on offer that compete in price with terrestrial DSL, without miserly bandwidth limitations. So I just signed the hell up.
All very exciting except that now, in order to make it work, and within a day of installing Apple’s latest and greatest system update, which is marvellous and a pleasure to behold – though I can’t figure why they abandoned the pane tabs in dialog boxes – I have to go out and buy a PC.
There are other reasons to get one: certain PC-only software won’t run under emulation, there’s always that testing-on-multiple-platforms thing that grownup software developers are always prattling on about, and the kids need a machine with which to go online and do, erm, ‘homework’ (there was once a rusty old clamshell iBook available for this purpose, but one day fate put it in the same room as the little red-haired kid, a glass of lemonade, and gravity). But still it feels a bit like hell has frozen over.
And I have no idea what to look for. I’d be grateful for help from Windows enthusiasts on the following questions:
- Will the Internet Sharing feature in Win2K or XP allow one to connect an Airport base station by ethernet and broadcast internet connections, or will separate routing software be required?
- Other than a hard drive, processor, video card, ethernet and USB, is there anything I should expect to need in the box?
- What is a reasonable ballpark price for such a box, assembled piecemeal? Monitor? Peripherals?
Thanking you!
UPDATE: Lebowski, we’re getting a Dell.
Thanks to all who wrote with advice, in particular those who pointed out the glaring truth that components are so inexpensive now that trying to save money by buying second-hand is foolish at best.
Still, the question of how Dell can manage to undercut the price of everyone else’s factory machines and still throw in a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and all other bells and whistles besides is a little worrying, no?
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