Cheers and let me introduce myself

[Stevenxowens792]

Most folks know me by Stevenxowens792 or XcessiveForce33.

Street Creds -- I work at a local fortune 50 here in north Texas and have survived servitude for 13 years so far. I am a Citrix Engineer (they call it delivery) but I have worked on many of our proprietary software and manufacturing systems. At various times in my career I have had different certs as well as Dell certs for hardware.

History -- I was first introduced to computers in the early 80s as my father purchased a Trash80 and I fell in love. My own first computer was given to me in 1983 and it was a apple 2 plus. I was a bit jealous as most of my friends had the C64 but you make due. I played lots of games like Ultima 3 and 4. I got lost in the late 80s and once my mullet left in 1991 I got back into pc's. I started working on OS/2 and strangely enough landed me my first IT job in the mid 90s. 16 years later I still work in IT and love it.

Due to my personality I hate programming but I love optimization and troubleshooting as well as customization of operating systems for applications.

Hobbies -- Besides being a work geek I play games when I get time at home. I love optimizing configs to get the most out of them. I mostly play FPS and RPG's. My favorite computers in the world are alienwares. I have owned 4 so far. m17, 2xm11x-r1 (one is my wifes), m15x and now the m14x. Besides computers I like guns a lot (customizing) and RC stuff (my son digs this a lot).

So, there you go. That's a little about me. Thanks for enduring my ramblings.

Best Wishes,

StevenX

[Brian]

Welcome to T|I steven, you'll be a nice fit here. You're going to be one of our first users with an M14x so any insights/benchmarks/pics + vids you want to share would be welcome.

[StamatisX]

Welcome Steven, we would greatly appreciate it if you could share your experience with us. Glad you joined us.

[unreal25]

Welcome aboard!

I've no idea what Trash80 is. But I like the idea of the original post, so let me do the same while I wait for some crap in my office. @Mods, possibly move the thread somewhere where intro posts fit into?

I started with Commodore64 with imba tape drive when I was a kid (I think 7 years old). When I was 10 I (finally!) got my first PC. It was a real beauty: Intel 486DX-2 66 MHz and I think 400MB HD + ADI 14" color monitor + 14.4K modem. It had sort-of-a turbo boost: you'd press a button on the case and it boosts from 33 MHz to 66 MHz. The days of MS-DOS, Norton Commander, ah... good ol' days... We had 3 academic institutions that offered internet access, each had ~20-30 dialup spots (for the country of about 4milion people btw). I figured out what the heck all these IP addresses, DNS servers, PPP protocols and similar crap are and voila. In 1994, unreal25 comes online for the first time (without a nick tho). A new internet era is being born!

Next I upgraded to using CD-ROM, then during my high school I believe I had Pentium 120 MHz or so. That part of my memory is kind of blurry. I do remember the shit 15" screen tho.

Last year of high school (18 years old), I'm saving my money like mad, starving basically and buy a new baby. Intel Celeron 466 MHz that I later successfuly oc'd to 700 MHz it was boosted by Riva TNT 16MB . Papa Ashtefere would be proud!

Going a bit more forward, I am running 3 computers:

- Alienware M17x-R2 in my sig

- Thinkpad X200 tablet

- Dell Inspiron 531 (AMD dual core 2 GHz) as a home server

Where am I going next? Only time can tell.

[wbabt007]

Welcome aboard Steven !

[Stevenxowens792]

Thanks all... Really appreciate it!

[Arklight]

Steven, introduced me to "T|I" and soon to be an m14x owner as well.

I know little about benchmarking devices, but i like too see good results in real life, you know, not the 3dmark scores or cinebench or whatever.

Steven Is an awesome contributor, very detailed at it as well.

My first computer was an amiga 500. I "inherited" when i was about 7. I played with it all the time, and at the same time my uncles got their own 286dx machine. Played with it too. At that age i thought personal computers are only gaming devices. Right now I use computers for my art stuff. Thanks for having me here!

[unreal25]

Welcome!

Bench long and prosper!

[Michael]

Welcome y'all! Glad to see T|I growing with such great contributors!

[Brian]

Nice to see there's others here like me that started with ancient hardware back in the day. My first PC was a crappy Timex T80 or whatever that I had no idea how to really use. After that I purchased an IBM with a 256 color screen and like 20 MHz processor and a 500 baud modem or something along those lines. I remember it costing around $2000 for that piece of shit--makes Alienware look cheap. I upgraded the modem on that computer to a 14.4k baud modem and started checking out local bulletin boards and even operated my own for a short time along with Prodigy service and eventually AOL.

I played Wolfenstein 3D with that crappy system and loved it, id games used to be a really cutting edge developer early on. There was also this 3D airplane game that you could play over LAN via serial cable connection and man I loved it! Think of it as a really really early version of battlefield confined to airplanes--the sound + graphics weren't bad either. I also played this game called

and it remains as one of my favorite games of all time (wish they'd produce a modern remake).

My next system was an HP Pavilion with a 120 mhz processor (don't remember how much ram) and I eventually upgraded it with a Voodoo 1 video card. I started playing Quake 1 after a buddy of mine had a demo CD of the game and installed it on my system. I managed to find a crack and got the full game and started competing online with a 500ms ping lol. Some kids at the time were in colleges that had T1 connections and they became known as "LPBs" or "Low ping bastards" because they could rip you a new asshole thanks to their awesome connections. That system is what got me really interested in online gaming and after that point I ventured into building my own homemade desktop and succeeded.

I think the first system I built was a Celeron 300a one that I OC'd to 450+ mhz (dont remember how much ram) with a TNT1 and a crappy 15" display and 56k modem. I loved it, I joined a quake 2 rocket arena clan called Talon and we had local games in the Bay Area. nVidia and Creative even showed up to our lan parties and helped sponsor them by giving away prizes--yup nVidia was still small then and very proactive in building a gaming community and I've got fond memories of them because of it.

After that, I eventually got DSL while in college at UC Davis and continued to build custom gaming systems with nVidia video cards (TNT2, Geforce 1/2/3) and late into college, I got my first Dell gaming notebook (Dell XPS 2). It was the XPS 2 that shifted my focus from gaming desktops to notebooks and I haven't looked back since. You'd think I would have gone into the computer field with all this exposure to tech but nope, I majored in Biology + clinical lab sciences and eventually went to medical school--though sometimes I regret not pursuing a degree in computer engineering.

[unreal25]

I miss playing 2-player multiplayer games in split screen with my friend. We used to play tons of games like that before. I haven't played Another World (it looks cool), but played otherwise tons of strategies and adventures. But, my all-time favorite is Fallout series. I like the games where you build stuff, even if it's just for the kicks (Theme Park, Theme Hospital, SimCity etc. )

[Brian]

Another World aka Out Of This World is truly an exceptional game, I'd recommend everyone try to find a copy to download and run via emulation. Here's a video where the guy that developed it talks about it, I found it very interesting..makes me miss the 90s:

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[mw86]

Welcome to the community. Let see I started late got a gift of an old mac all in one unit (13" monitor and floppy drive all in one unit, black and white, 16mb of ram idk) Next a 386 with wolfenstien (loved it, and doom) In between I found myself tinkering with an old acer with the K6-2 or whatever. Next I found myself with our family pc a crap gateway essential, 64mb ram upgraded to 256mb sd133, 10gb with windows Major Error which I eventually installed XP and I bought a budget PCI geforce 2 32mb lol (overclocked that thing till it was dead twas great had no fan or heat sink on gpu... when I was done the chip was blackened around and looked like it must of been smoking lol) I played Unreal Tournament for hours on end. Next I said to my family enough crap and got a $600 barebones kit that was about $400 after rebates... So it was a Soyo Dragon KT-600 Plus motherboard tower combo with 120GB HD, Athlon XP 2800+ later upgraded to an Athlon XP 3200+, Geforce 4 Agp 8x w/ 64mb, and 1gb ddr upgraded to 3gb. Well had that awhile, then went to laptops... first a Fujitsu N6010 with Ati 9600pro, Pentium 4 3.2ghz w/ HT 17 inch beautiful display and amazing sound. Then I went for their 17" N6470 w/ Core 2 @ 2ghz, HD2600M, dual 250gb hard drives and 4gb DDR2 667Mhz (independent fans for cpu/gpu). I loved and still love that computer, very proffesional look and feel to it and it's display. Next a HP HDX18t... what a beast I thought... learned HP likes single fan solutions which didn't suit me well. It had a dual lamp display at 1080P... Q9000@2ghz, Nvidia GT130M (which I overclocked anyway... don't remember what too) it came with a 7200k 500gb hd and I bought a second one for the second bay, also had Bluray rom... It's about 2 years old now and I sold it to my mom since she wanted to game and had two dell lappies with old a$$ intel graphics poop. So she's very happy with it to this day and so is my brother (same config without extra HD) though just ordered a replacement 120watt ac adapter... So wrapping this up I last June ordered an M17 R2 which is now deceased. I have locally by word of mouth fixed probably 50+ computers and refurbished maybe 20+ still have like 5 clunkkers around and spare parts. Still have tjat Soyo tower which I will reinstall for a friend for free as a basic internet computer with light gaming of basic 2d games like Big Fish... So there ya have it, no training like you guys and just like to work on computers... I think I am sticking with DTR's and I plan to build my friend (the Fujitsu N6470) an Intel 2600K based liquid cooled desktop for right around a 1K budget... I know it can be done on that budget and will probably have a basic Single GPU in it, maybe a Desktop 6970.