After my last post I felt rather silly about the Dell 4600 and not using it because of the power switch. Or rather, I felt that it was blocking me, preventing me from moving forward.
So during my lunch hour, I visited the Dell web site and hunted down the part. My search included various web sites (courtesy of altavista.com), dell.com, the Dell on-line chat service, and Dell phone support. The on-line chat was helpful in that it provided me with a part number. Dell's phone support was not particularly helpful. The dell.com web site was helpful -- once I supplied the part number. The web site did not help me find the part number for the power switch.
The switch assembly (its the switch, a mounting bracket, and a cable) should arrive next week. (Probably Wednesday.) When it arrives, I will verify that it is the right component. If it is, I will order memory and a hard drive for the computer. (Those will take another few days.) By early September, I should have the PC working.
This PC will be the Windows computer. My plan is to install Windows 7 and as many free Microsoft packages as I can. I'm thinking of Visual Studio Express, SQL Server Express, IIS, and... um... that's all I can think of for now.
I may want two PCs running Windows: one server and one client.
I'm avoiding virtual PCs for now. My hardware can support Windows, but not virtual PCs running Windows.
No comments:
Post a Comment