Well more accurately, I replaced nearly all the parts. She had been using my Athlon XP 1700 machine that I put together back in 2001. Recently it started turning itself off at random inconvenient moments. A quick visual inspection of the motherboard confirmed my what I suspected: bulging capacitors. It’s a well known problem with PCs from the first half of this decade. Apparently somebody in China got some bad electrolyte and produced nearly all the capacitors used on computer motherboards during that time with it. I’ve actually been lucky to get 5 years out of this motherboard. At some point I will try to get some capacitors and fix this board but the amount of time it will take to do it without special ordering capacitors (expensive) was prohibitive.
So I bought some new parts. I wanted to maximize the value and power efficiency I got out of the new parts. After searching around the web, the hot new chipset for non-gaming systems is the AMD 780G. It’s fast, low power, and actually has decent integrated graphics. While it wasn’t the cheapest motherboard at $89.99, it’s got USB 2, Firewire, eSATA, DVI, and HDMI. She’ll actually be able to watch Blu-Ray on this system when it comes down in price in a few years. And it’s got connections to match whatever Ipod/Camera/Toy she is using at the momement. I matched this with a AMD Athlon X2 4800 for 59.99. I picked up 2GB of DDR2 RAM that should come to $27.99 after rebate. And she really wanted a DVD drive so I picked up a DVD burner for $26.99. Total after rebate shipping $211 for a system that’s easily 6x as fast as the old 1700. I ordered all my parts from NewEgg. They have great prices, fast shipping, and the best selection of computer parts anywhere.
I actually expect this system to pay for itself in a year or 2. It idles at 45 watts compared to over 115 watts idle for the old system. That’s a savings of 70 watts. Since she likes to leave it powered up and available 24/7, thats 70 watts x 24 hours x 365 days = 613.2 KWH a year. At 17 cents/KWH that’s $104 a year. Sure enough, in 2 years her computer upgrade will be free.
Jon Deals
The AP published an article today about how premium fuel sales are down significantly. First let me get this out of the way. If your car calls for 87 octane gas, you are a fool for using anything more expensive than 87 octane. If you engine is specified to run with 87 octane, you get no benefit from using anything higher. It is literally money down the drain or up in smoke in this case…
On the other hand if you car engine is designed for premium fuel, using the cheap stuff will cause your engine to run in low performance mode. What this means is that you will lose horsepower, torque, and acceleration. Most importantly, you will lower your fuel economy. An engine that is designed for premium may get 30 MPG using the specified grade, but put in the cheap stuff and you’ll drop to 26-28 MPG or so. So even though you saved $3.00 on your fill up, that tank of gas will go 50 miles shorter.
It’s interesting to note that most of the premium fuel vehicles are European. Gas has been ridiculously expensive for years in Europe it stands to reason that they would want to find a way to make high performance engines run more efficiently. The answer of course is premium fuel. While gas prices have double in the past couple of years, the spread between regular and premium is a relatively constant $0.30. Why not pay a few cents more to get better fuel economy overall?
Jon Money lessons
A hot topic of conversation that came up at dinner this weekend were the long lines at the Dunkin-Donuts drive-through backing all the way up into the road. How lazy can people be? Is it really that much easier to wait 15 minutes with engine idling than to take 5 minutes or less to park and walk inside? While cars probably use vastly difference amounts of fuel to sit in line for 15 minutes (Prius = near zero vs. 5.0L V8 = over a half a gallon), even without the fuel charge is the 15 minute wait worth saving the short walk?
First, I have to make that observation that the vast majority of people are probably just waiting for a coffee. I’m not a coffee drinker but I do drink alot of beer. Even if they did have drive through bars, I don’t think I’d use them. The only beer I’d ever wait in line for is a free beer. Is the coffee that good that’s its worth sitting in your car for 15 minutes waiting for? I understand that caffeine is addictive (by some accounts more so than nicotine) but I’ve never worried about the difference between Coke and Pepsi enough to wait in line for one over the other.
Second, the parking lot at Dunkin-Donuts is not very big, it’s not like it’s a long walk. It would most certainly be faster to park and walk-in than wait in the drive through. Does coffee make you lazy? Perhaps people are concerned that if they get up in walk-in, they will actually wake up enough to not need the stimulative effects of coffee, thus making the trip to DD worthless…
Third, with all this talk of recession (which I still don’t believe), how can people afford a $5 iced coffee every day? I thought everybody was broke and out of work? The recession clearly isn’t bad enough to warrant a switch $5 coffee to $0.10 or less homemade coffee.
Jon Economy, Money lessons
Even though I rent my apartment, I still venture to Lowe’s once in a while. We’ve started getting ants in our apartment so I wanted to pick up some bug killer.
When we first moved into our apartment, the finished basement area was crawling with spiders. This didn’t really bother me but the fiancee wanted them gone. So we picked up a bottle of Ortho Home Defense Max at Target. It worked great, killed the existing ones in seconds and prevented other from returning. Now that the Spiders (predators) are gone, it probably explains why we have ants. This time I picked up the big jug of the Ortho, on sale for $11 for 1.3 gallons vs. $4 for the 28 oz.
The pump thing on the big jug is really slick. You hook the hose up to the big jug, then slowly pull back on this spring loaded contraption on the nozzle. Then just pull the trigger for a “super soaker” style jet of bug killing action. The reduction in ants was noticeable within an hour.
Also while at Lowe’s I picked up some pipe insulation for our hot water pipe. I’ve noticed that for the first person to take a shower in the morning, the hot water never lasts very long. Once the hot water tank recovers, subsequent showers are nice and warm. I suspect this is from convection currents cooling the water in sections of the hot water tank but not in the area where the thermostat is. By insulating the first 3 feet on both the cold and hot water pipes nearest to the heater, it is supposed to reduce this effect. At $1.64 for 6 feet of insulation, I gave it a shot. I’ll report back if there is any noticeable effect.
Jon Deals
Apparently a growing number of celebrities are finding themselves in foreclosure. The two that I know of are Jose Canseco and Ed McMahon. Should we taxpayers be put on the hook for Ed McMahon’s $4.8 million mortgage? Barney Frank seems to think so.
This is just further evidence that in the current mortgage crisis the people facing foreclosure cannot be classified as rich or poor, black or white, etc. The only classification that seems to suit all these borrowers is stupid and irresponsible. Do we really want the American public to see Jose Canseco get bailed out for being stupid and irresponsible?
Jon Economy
I found this article from the Boston Herald: ‘Cash Outs’ Up Foreclosures. I don’t think this should be news to anyone but it states some points that have been widely ignored by the press.
“Bay State homeowners who’ve lost properties in the foreclosure crisis usually started out with “prime” mortgages but apparently did “cash-out” refinancings and ended up in subprime loans, new research shows.
While researchers say records don’t show why foreclosure victims refinanced so much, the Fed suspects many got “cash-out” mortgages. That’s where you refinance into a bigger loan than you had before, pocketing the difference in cash.”
Not a single mention of these people being “tricked” by lenders. Hmm… They went to the bank and refinanced their house and got cash in return. They spent all the cash and then found out they didn’t have enough left to pay their mortgage. You expect me to believe that these people are “victims?”
Right now, my online brokerage would let me withdraw close to $50,000 even though my cash balance is less than $100. Should I withdraw all that cash and then scream to the government if I get a margin call? I could claim they tricked me because they just sent me a check and didn’t tell me I would have to pay them back? Yeah I don’t think that would work. Why should it work for property investors (aka homeowners)?
Jon Economy
