THANK YOU, CANDLEPOWER FORUMS MEMBERS!

Holy cow!! This new Dell Dimension 4500 computer was provided to me and The LED Museum through the collective wallet-digging efforts of a group of Candlepower Forums members after my old computer started to poop out and cause all kinds of delays, lost work, and lost data that was detrimental to this website.
This equipment was received on 06-27-02.

How will YOU, the user of The LED Museum benefit?
Let me count just a few of the ways:

1. No more computer-related delays in reporting LED/flashlight data.
   
   
2. No more f*cking with floppy disks to import ProMetric charts, or spending hours looking for a floppy that isn't full of bad sectors.
   
   
3. Better quality pictures - with its 19" Sony Trinitron boob tube, I can actually see things I couldn't see before. Both of my cameras also work with it, so I don't waste half an hour to get one or two photos imported.
   
   
4. Better connectivity - being fully networkable means I can connect lab instruments to other computers, and then the other computers to this one and not have floppies or their 1.44 meg file size limit getting in the way.
   
   
5. It's blazing fast - jobs that took an hour now only take a few minutes.
   
   
6. And it's crash-resistant. No more typing up a document, only to lose it to a Windows '95 or '98 "blue screen" crash right when I hit the "Save" button.
   

Here are the specs:


Dell Dimesion 4500 Pentium 4 at 1.8GHz
512MB DDR SDRAM
Dell Enhanced Keyboard
19" Sony Trinitron flat-screen CRT boob tube monitor
64MB GeForce3 Ti 200 Graphics Card
Harmon/Kardon powered speakers with powered subwoofer
80GB Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive
3.5 Floppy
MS Windows XP Home Edition
Logitech Optical USB Rat
10/100 PCI Fast Ethernet NIC
56K Telephony Modem
24x/10x/40x Max CD-RW
Bundled Software
3 Year at Home Service

This is DEFINITELY a huge step up from my last system, and is much faster than anything I've ever even seen. It is also proving to be very reliable - I've only had two applications crash, and neither one of them hosed the OS, so I didn't even need to shut down and start over like I would have with the old system. Whatever is inside this thing completely removes crashed apps from memory, so you can just restart them right off the desktop and take up where you left off!

I should also mention that several other CPF members donated computer hardware independent from the Dell package over the last year or so. This includes a new copy of Windows 2000 Professional to upgrade one of my existing computers, a 5-channel Cat-5 LAN hub, a 10/100 NIC, a 56K telephony modem, a package of 25 new brand-name "recordable" CD-ROMs, a VGA monitor, a 13GB hard disk, a Lightman digital footcandle/lux meter, a Circuit Specialists Inc. DMM, and last but not least, a pair of older Pentium II desktop systems that now run some of my laboratory equipment - one of them since last October or so.

Here are a couple of more pics of the shiny new DELL for your enjoyment...


Right after I finished setting it up on June 27, 2002.



Checking out the sound system with music ROMs from a Williams F-14 Tomcat pinball. A subwoofer, cool!! :-) The black buttons on the top of the keyboard are Internet shortcuts; the silver knob on the right controls the sound!


THANK YOU, CANDLEPOWER FORUMS! WHAT A FAMILY!!

Why not stop by and check out this great group of people?
If you like things that glow, you'll love Candlepower Forums.