16th Annual Jolt Product Excellence & Productivity Awards Finalists

Developer Tools, Books, and Websites Vie for Coveted Trophy.

This should be of interest to software developers to keep themselves updated with some productive tools, best practices and methodologies.

"For the past 15 years, the Software Development Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Awards have been presented annually to showcase products that have “jolted” the industry with their significance and made the task of creating software faster, easier, and more efficient."

CMP Media’s Software Development Magazine Announces Finalists for the 16th Annual Jolt Product Excellence & Productivity Awards:

Books General

• Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become by Peter Morville (O'Reilly)
• Best Software Writing by Joel Spolsky (Apress) *Should be a good exposure read
  
• Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Open Source as Business Strategy by Ron Goldman and Richard P. Gabriel (Morgan Kaufmann)
• Prefactoring by Ken Pugh (O'Reilly)
• Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project by Karl Fogel (O'Reilly)
• The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun (O'Reilly) *PM is a skill I must master
  
• The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Books: Technical

• Agile Web Development with Rails by Dave Thomas et al. (Pragmatic Bookshelf) *Agile and Ruby (Rail) sound intriguing to me
  
• Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries by Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams (Addison-Wesley) *A read if I plan to do some serious .NET development
  
• Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel (Apress)
• Service-Oriented Architecture: Concepts Technology and Design by Thomas Erl (Prentice Hall)
• Why Programs Fail, First Edition: A Guide to Systematic Debugging by Andreas Zeller (Morgan Kaufmann) *Hopefully to be good guide on debugging
  
• Wicked Cool Java: Code Bits, Open-Source Libraries, and Project Ideas by Brian D. Eubanks (No Starch Press)

Enterprise Project Management

• Corticon Business Rules Management 4.0 (Corticon)
• JBoss 2 Portal (JBoss)
• ProVision Enterprise 5.0 (Proforma)
• Rally 5.6 (Rally Software Development)
• Visual Studio Team System 2005 (Microsoft) *Sounds like a comprehensive suite to me
  
• WelcomRisk 2.6 (Welcom)

Database Engines and Data Tools

• Attensity Discover 2.7 (Attensity)
• Berkeley DB 4.4 (Sleepycat Software)
• EnterpriseDB 2005 (EnterpriseDB)
• Google Maps API 2005 (Google)
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (Microsoft) *Haven't drill into this yet. MS SQL 2000 satisfied my needs at the moment
  
• MySQL 5.0 (MySQL) *5 saves the day by supporting nested SQL
  

Defect Tracking, Change, and Configuration Management

• Automated Build Studio 1.7 (AutomatedQA)
• CollabNet Enterprise Edition 2005 (CollabNet)
• ElectricAccelerator 3.0 (Electric Cloud)
• FogBugz 4.0 (Fog Creek) *How good is this stuff?
  
• Guiffy SureMerge 7.0 (Guiffy Software)
• JIRA 3.4 (Atlassian Software)
• Perforce SCM 2005 (Perforce) *Looks complicated
  

Design Tools and Modeling

• Altova UModel 2005 (Altova)
• Borland Together 2006 for Eclipse (Borland)
• Compuware OptimalJ 4.0 (Compuware)
• Enterprise Architect 6.0 (Sparx Systems)
• Lattix LDM 2.0 (Lattix)
• MagicDraw UML 10.0 (No Magic)
• MindManager Pro 6.0 (Mindjet)

Development Environments

• Borland Developer Studio 2006 (Borland)
• CodeRush w/ Refactor! Pro 1.1 (Developer Express)
• Eclipse SDK 3.1 (Eclipse.org) *A very good free tool
  
• IntelliJ IDEA 5.0 (JetBrains)
• Komodo 3.5 (ActiveState)
• Visual Studio Team System 2005 (Microsoft) *Sounds like a comprehensive suite to me

Libraries, Frameworks, and Components

• .NET Framework 2.0 (Microsoft) *A worthy framework, hopefully for a better tommorrow
  
• Dundas Chart for .NET 5.0 (Dundas Software)
• Qt 4.0 (Trolltech)
• Spring Framework 1.2.6 (SpringFramework.org) *Superbly Cool!
  
• TopCoder Software Component Libraries 5.0 (TopCoder)
• U3 SDK 2005 (U3)

Mobile Development Tools

• Carbide.c++ Express (Nokia)
• Crossfire 5.6 (AppForge)
• Flash Lite 2.0 (Adobe)
• mWorks platform (mFoundry)
• NetBeans IDE 4.1 (Sun Microsystems) *Better GUI Designer than Eclipse
  
• Qtopia (Trolltech)

Quality Project Management

• CollabNet Enterprise Edition with Project Dashboard/Task Management 2005 (CollabNet)
• protexIP/development 3.0 (Black Duck)
• QACenter Enterprise Edition 5.1 (Compuware)
• Rally 5.6 (Rally Software Development)
• SilkCentral Test Manager 8.1 (Segue)
• TargetProcess Suite 1.4 (TargetProcess)

Security Tools

• CodeAssure 2.0 (Secure Software)
• DevInspect & SecureObjects 1.5 (SPI Dynamics)
• DevPartner SecurityChecker 1.0 (Compuware)
• Elemental Compliance System 1.4 (Elemental)
• Fortify Security Tester 1.0 (Fortify)
• SQL Backup Pro Edition 2005 (Red Gate Software)

Testing Tools

• Agitator 3.0 (Agitar Software)
• AQtime 4.7 (AutomatedQA)
• Clover 1.3 (Cenqua)
• Parasoft Jtest 7.0 (Parasoft)
• TestComplete 4.0 (AutomatedQA)
• VMTN Subscription 2005 (VMware)

Utilities

• Camtasia Studio 3.0 (TechSmith)
• DevPartner Studio 8 (Compuware)
• dotTrace 1.1 (JetBrains)
• Fog Creek Copilot 1.2 (Fog Creek Software) *How good is this stuff?
  
• Openmake 6.4 (Catalyst Systems)
• ReSharper 1.5 (JetBrains)
• SnagIt 7.2 (TechSmith) *A Fine Tool
  

Web Development Tools

• Backbase Standard Edition 3.1 (Backbase)
• ColdFusion MX7 (Adobe) *Heard of it, never bother to try it
  
• DevPartner Studio 8 (Compuware)
• JBoss Application Server 4x (JBoss) *Haven't really need an App Server yet, Tomcat will suffice at the moment
  
• Macromedia Studio 8 2005 (Adobe) *Some Goodies
  
• Rails 1.0 (rubyonrails.org) *I am tempted to try the rail
  
• Zend Studio - Enterprise Edition 5.0 (Zend) *Pretty good (probably the best PHP IDE around), but Eclipse and VS Studio are much better IDEs
  

Pep Talk for an Entrepreneur Wannabe

“For every brilliant (or not so brilliant) idea you thought of, there are probably a thousand people who think of it as well, a couple hundred would work on the idea and ten of them would complete it, and only very few will nail it correctly with success”

I known of the above fact for quite a while, but I would only truly felt it whenever I work on the idea itself. When the idea first appear on my mind, everything is almost perfect with plenty of potential. The idea is brilliant and unique (as usual), the competition is weak or not existence and it seems viable with adequate market demand. As I dig deeper and start working on the idea, I would find stronger competitions and challenges which would make me doubt my own venture. Perhaps the competitions are not really strong, but they did quite a good job and still get unnoticed by the general public (me). It makes me wonder how good I have to be in order to succeed. What does it takes?

I guess it really takes in a lot of factor for the idea to flourish into a commercially viable product. What do I need to have?

• A Good Idea
• Skill and Effort to develop it
• Understand the Market Demand
• Understand why the competition fail
• Business Plan (How to make money out of it?)
• Marketing Plan (How to get people to know about it and buy it?)

I am more of a software developer than a business man, though I am trying to be more of a business man. I would tend to fall into the trap of developing a very technically outstanding product, rather than building a good product which everyone would like to use. I need to plan and put more emphasis on my product and marketing strategy rather than technicality if I ever hope of any chance of success.

I need to answer the following question:

• What do I have to offer? Product Features? (Idea)
• Why people would want to use it? (Market Demand)
• What advantage I have over my competition? Am I a clone? (Strategic Advantage)
• How to make it simple and effective? (Usability)
• How do I let people know about it? How do I cross the Chasm? (Marketing)
• What market am I targeting? (Market Segmentation)
• How do I become a market leader in my own market segment? (Product Leadership)
• How do I make money out of it? (Business)
• How do I break the Chicken and Egg cycle (Million Dollar Question)
• How determined am I to succeed? (Confident & Perseverance)

There is no free lunch in this world. For everything I desire, there is a price to pay for. Once I make up my mind, thou shall not regret nor give up (no matter how difficult or doubtful it has became). I shall regret if I didn’t see it though until the end. May I have the strength, wisdom and perseverance :)

“Don’t start a business if you can’t explain what pain it solves, for whom, and why your product will eliminate this pain, and how the customer will pay to solve this pain. The other day I went to a presentation of six high tech startups and not one of them had a clear idea for what pain they were proposing to solve.” Joel's Forward in Micro-ISV: From Vision To Reality (Need to get this book).

I need to solve a pain.

How is the New Life so far?

It had been a week since my last employment day, and I had been taking it quite easily. What had I done so far?

• I shop for my new PC (the White Knight) and set it up
• I done some Chinese New Year shopping
• I done some furniture shopping (haven’t bought any yet)
• I edited lots of videos (Wei Kang’s wedding, Chin Chuan’s wedding, Rock Climbing and Birthday Karaoke). I still had Christmas and 4 hours of Chiang Mai Advanture to edit. I am too tired, perhaps next weekend.
• I finished my blogs on Amazing Chiang Mai Trip (Part I, II, III, IV, V, VI) and Gift of Heart (Part I, II, III, IV)
• Had 3 leisure day during Chinese New Year

It seems like the free and easy days had ended, and serious works are coming up next. I still need to pick up some furniture, as my desk real estate is really limited and I would like to create a more professional looking SOHO environment for myself.

How do I endure the rest of my self employment life?

• I would need to discipline myself to wake up early and work from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M.
• I need to keep myself motivated, and avoid falling into anxiety
• I need to have full confident my of plan, be persistent and complete the work (no giving up half way through!)
• I need to keep myself happy as I am all alone working at home with minimum human interaction (except with my mom)
• Learn to let go of myself (learn to relax and enjoy life a bit), separation of work and leisure time
• Keep myself occupy

Wish me lots of luck, persistency, discipline and enjoyment of life :)

The New Doggie Year

Today is the 2nd day of Chinese New Year, and probably the last day of holidays for me. As usual, Chinese New Year is pretty boring for me, and it had got worst ever since I move to KL. Back in Kuantan, at least I get to visits friends’ house for Ang Pau, Gamble, Yum Cha, Bowling and Movies.

We had the symbolic family dinner on the night before Chinese New Year, with every family member around. Too bad bro is still too stubborn for whatever reasons he had in his mind on not eating together with us (or rather, dad). I hope someday he shall realise the hurt he had done all these years before it is too late. TV as usual after that, and somehow, TV just doesn’t seems that interesting anymore.

On the 1st day of Chinese New Year morning is the usual Mee Sua breakfast, and this new version doesn’t taste as good as it used to be. Perhaps the Ikan Bilis/Chicken soup had been replaced by sister’s vegetarian Bak Kut Teh soup. Luckily I had a last minute movie date for Fearless (it saves the day from total boringness). This show is pretty exciting as it is action packed, in good old Jet Li fighting style. “In this world, many things are never meant to be fair. I have no choice but to go through it”, the lesson I learnt from it. Actually the message they are trying to send is, “Martial Art are meant to build the body, mind and character. If it is used to hurt others, there shall be a never ending vengeance and vendetta”. I do find it is true that we should forgive whenever possible, as holding grudge is painful. More boring TV again for the night, arghhh!


The 2nd day of Chinese New Year isn’t getting any more fun. I wake up late, as there is nothing much to look forward. I end up playing Civilization IV, but I didn’t enjoy it much. Perhaps I had changed (no longer can call myself a gamer), and games are no longer fun to me (Shit!). One less thing to enjoy in life. Perhaps I have gotten too serious with less leisure time and too much on my mind. And I spent the night watching some TV again and writing this blog. How sad could it be? Where had the fun of Chinese New Year gone to? Had I changed? Or did the environment changed? Perhaps many things did changed, as changes is one of the certain things in this world. I miss the fireworks!

Since I don’t find myself resting nor having fun, then I might as well start work tomorrow. Sad indeed, but it doesn’t seem like much options are around.

May I have a good doggie year, blessed with good health, fortune and happiness. The same goes to you all :)

Amazing Chiang Mai Trip Part VI: Nigh Bazaar and Home

Today is the last night we spent at Chiang Mai. The place we stay is quite near to a night bazaar, thus we decide to go there for a walk and shopping as well. This is a night bazaar with lots of goodies, food and some performances. It is fairly hard to describe all of them, but I shall try my best with words and left the rest for the pictures to take care off.

First we have very nice and sweet strawberry, which is absolutely delicious. They have some meatball thingy, and some other fried stuff. They have drinks served in bamboo, cakes, Thai pancake and alike, and fried insects as well.





The highlight of this market is the goodies on sale, while the food is meant to fill our mouth and stomach full along the way. Goodies include all kinds of dolls, clay and wooden figurine, lantern and lights, bracelets and necklaces and many more. All these stuff look nice and unique, and most important of all, cheap!





There are some people playing some musical instrument along the way, while other sings. There is a guy who looks like Ronaldo showing off his football skill, keeping the ball off the ground without using his hands. He is really good, and I drop him 10 Baht. There seems to be some festival there going on there, many girls from all over the province are performing some local dances, singing or speeches on the centre stage.



We bought many stuff for Christmas gift exchange, and also as souvenirs and some others for our own keeping. Tonight is Christmas as well, but Chiang Mai had no sign of Christmas celebration at all. We had ice-cream at the hotel, but there is no Christmas atmosphere at all. The town seems so dead.


Time for Christmas gift exchange. I bought an Ocarina for Tang, a clay flute; Lee Mun had a dolphin beanie and a silver bracelet with green beads. I got a big doll from Lee Mun, and a small doll figurine from Tang.



This is the last night here, and we shall take a flight home tomorrow morning. I really enjoyed Chiang Mai, as she is adventurous, beautiful, fun, polite, delicious and affordable. I shall miss her a lot, and hopefully one day I shall return for a different kind of adventure.




"Goodbye, Chiang Mai"

Gift of Heart Part IV: Mini Clay Figurine

Wynn is leaving soon (this is a back dated post), and Mei Ru reminds me of the idea of making something for her. I think I should, given that I really feel close and comfortable with her. Since I had already fallen in love with clay work, then I shall make one for her. At the same time, Mei Ru stalks a Totoro from me as well. Why not.

What to make for Wynn? I know she likes Tare Panda as well, but I don’t want to make the same thing twice. I know she had some Mashimaro dolls in her room as well, thus this might be a good choice. Then there is this thing going on between her and Mei Ru, where she would always draw a tortoise on my hand. Perhaps a tortoise for her? I asked her directly, and she asks for a tortoise happily. The day before I make her gift, she draws a tortoise with a big head and tick tack toe on its back on my hand again. This seems like a good idea.

This time I would make something smaller. Not only it is cheaper (less raw material used), but it shall look even cuter. I shall make a cute tortoise first, with brown colour body and green colour shell. I make one big shell with dark green; can cover it with 9 lighter green spot for the tick tack toe effect. I use a blade to carve the cross and the circle. Then came the big head with 2 black eye, and four feet with carved toes. It looks pretty cute, but the colour might seems a bit too dull.


I decide to make a white Totoro (still haven’t figure out whether its name is Bom Bom Ba or Ji Ji Ja), since it is cute and simple. One big round white body plus head, and two bunny ears. The eyes are made of squash black, white and followed by black again. A simple and very cute little white Totoro is born, yeah!


Time to bake them using the same style again (put them in a steel pot and heat it up, as mom put it, avoid wasting gas in baking such a small toy). This time mom made a wrong estimation of the baking time, as the figurine is smaller this time. Actually I thought of that as well, but I forgot to remind her. So, the base of the figurine got burnt a bit. The tortoise had a totally black shining base with a half shaded body, while the white Totoro had a brown base instead. It isn’t that bad, as now they look kinda unique, one of a kind limited edition.




PS: The piece of shit is actually meant for Mei Ru, as she draws them on my hand the day before.

Gift of Heart Part III: Art of Drawing

Many years ago I gave a piece of artwork to the first girl I like. It consists of a few pieces of drawings, where each illustrates a part of us being together (from 1st meet to date to courtship). Each peace of drawing has some Chinese text illustration on it, accompanied by a translucent piece of paper with some motives on them. When the translucent paper is combined with the drawing, it creates a different feel of the art work. All the pieces are combined into a hand made book. This is probably the most heart-ful gift I ever made in my life, which I was for one second reluctant to give it away. But what is the purpose of a gift if it is not given away, as its value lies within the hand of the receiver.

The gift chosen for Totoro Girl is of course, a Totoro; and I know the exact place to get one. I found some new Totoro stocks in an Anime Toy shop at 1U, and the first thing which caught my eye is a Totoro photo frame. What so special about a photo frame? Just buying a Totoro doll seems a bit plain, but a photo frame would allow some creativity space. I can draw something meaningful and slip it into the photo frame. The frame is pretty cute actually, with a grey Totoro and a big leaf as its hat, and many small flowers, leafs and mushrooms all around it.


It had been a very long while since I last drawn something, and I hope I still have the basic skill set. I need to buy a whole new set of stationeries, as I had loose my last set (I have no idea where they are now). I pick up my supplies at Popular bookstore, as they have quite a good variety. I choose back my old faithful tools, such as Faber Castell Water Colour Pencil, Buncho Oil Paster, Crayon, Silver Ink Pen, Black Ink Pen, 2B Pencils & Erasers, Blade and Colour Papers.


What should I draw then? Of course, a Totoro. I choose a picture where Totoro sleep under a tree in the jungle, with Bom Bom Ba and Ji Ji Ja by his side. Then we have a little girl sleeping by Totoro’s side. I like this picture, as the environment is calm and they are sleeping calmly and safely. I did some modification to it, and hopefully it turn out fine. Actually my art work pretty sucks and I think she can draw much better than me. But I think she will appreciate it, as long as it doesn’t look too ugly.



After the art work is finished, slip the paper into the photo frame and it fit perfectly. The Totoro is put into the “doggy” bag I bough earlier. All done! Yeah!




Somehow she fancies Totoro a lot, may it due to its cuteness, probably some mysterious elements and some touching moment. I think Totoro is a good mythical creature, which shows kindness and gave us some hope of miracle and fantasy. Probably we could use Totoro as education medium for the younger children, to create a kind future full of hope.

"龙猫会给乖的小孩每天一个美丽的梦"

How to love my Mom and Dad?

I wanted to be a good son, who would appreciate and love my parent. At times, I found that it is quite difficult to be one. Maybe it is due to my impatient, or perhaps I take them for granted, perhaps it is a complicated cycle of parent and child relationship.

My dad come back from Kota Baru to celebrate Chinese New Year with us, which I am glad to see him again. I though of we could spent some quality together, treat him nice and make him happy. But somehow I didn't manage to achieve my objective.

My dad is quite a panicky person, and he kinda disapprove many of my habits. For example, he will mumble a lot whenever I sleep late, and keep calling me whenever I try to sleep for a while longer before waking up in the morning. Some old habits just don't change, including his and mine. My dad isn't quite familiar with KL roads, and still can withstand the heavy traffic and difficulty in finding parking. Sometimes he doesn't quite listen to my direction, and he seems really panic. I think I raised my voice many times, and I really feel bad about it. I think I should learn to be more patient in handling small frustrations.

I think in the deepest level, I do love my mom and dad. The problem is, I don't usually manage to show my love and appreciation for them. Sometime I am lazy, and sometimes I am impatient over small frustrations. When I was young, I used to love my dad very much and hated my mom. Dad is always the good guy who pamper me, while mommy is the bad guy who try to educate me. Somehow, I come to love them equally when I went for college, as suddenly I realise their true intention as parents. I understand they really tried their very best to be a good parents, and I would say they did quite a good job. No parent can be prefect, as there are so many areas to cover.

I hope I can appreciate and love them better, before I loose them.

Gift of Heart Part II: Clay Work

When shopping for Christmas gift at 1U, I found a very special shop. A shop which sell polymer clay, which you can shape it into anything you like and bake it to create a clay figurine. I wanted to ask them to make one for me instead, but they claim it would require one week of waiting time. Since I am going to Chiang Mai soon, might as well I buy the material and make it myself. Besides, it looks like really fun. I think I like Plastisin very much when I was small, besides LEGO of course.

I got about 6 pieces of clays of different colours in a pack for around RM 25, then a bigger piece of black and white colour clay for RM 10 each. They even sell clay which turn into rubber after bake (suitable as gift for kids). Wynn told me later that there are much cheaper white clay available, which can be made into coloured clay using some colouring.


I missed the Christmas deadline and drag the completion of this gift until several weeks ago. I decide to use this to make a panda figurine for Miss Evil, since she likes panda very much. Tare Panda seems to be the cutest panda around, so I might as will make that. I Google around for images of Tare Panda as my references.

Making this gift is really fun, maybe because I do like clay work. First I make a pillow with some pattern on it. Then came the head, which is extremely difficult due to the eyes (hard to make them look cute). Then came the round body, followed by ears, hands and legs. I add a cape and hat for Tare to make him look even cuter. This is my design, with references from existing Tare Panda product out there of course.




There are many small pieces of leftover clay, and I still feel like making more stuff. I used them to make a mini tree, a mushroom, a cake and a candy bar. These small little things are really cute; I think I had fallen in love with clay work.


I ask my mom to bake it in the oven, and she complains it is wastage of gas since the figurine is so small compared to the big oven. She put them into a steel pot and heats it up instead. For a figurine of 2-3 inches thick, 20-30 minutes should be just nice.

These clay figurines fit perfectly into the gift box I bought earlier. I put some soft paper in to fill up the spaces, make it look nicer and for a bit of cover up effect. Put the box into a small carry bag and it is ready to go.






PS: Since Valentine day is around the corner, does anyone wanna order some handmade valentine gift from me?

My White Knight in Shining Armor

I have been wanted got get a new PC for myself for quite a while, but I can’t justify it since I don’t spent much time at home. With my resignation came the justification. Besides, I need to equip myself with a good tool in order to do a good job.

Should I get a new Desktop or Notebook? Sometimes I kinda fancy notebook, due to its sleekness and mobility. Notebook seems much cooler, with a higher cost and less firepower of course. Notebook would seem much useful for someone in the software business, as I might need to do demo and support, and perhaps do programming in Star Bucks. But I kinda skip the notebook for the following reason:

• I already owned a notebook (ASUS M200E), though she is already 3 years old. She is crippled because the battery is dead (less mobility), and I am too Kiam Siap to fork out RM 400 for the replacement. She can still do a pretty good job, as long as there are not too heavy
• Though the entry price for notebook had gone lower (RM 3000++), but they haven’t advanced much in terms of performance. By forking out another 4K or more, I could only get myself extra 400 MHz of processing power, 512 MB more RAM, 20 GB more HD and WIFI. It seems less bang for the buck compared to desktop.
• I want a high performance computer to lessen wait time and increase productivity, and a notebook just isn’t meant to do that

So, I had made up on mind to get a notebook. Should I go for AMD or Intel? About 7 years ago in 1998, I would definitely choose Intel due to its stability reputation with existing software. But my mind had been poisoned by review in Tom’s Hardware Guide and AnandTech which seems like AMD always out beat Intel. Besides, AMD had gone mainstream with more than 50% adoption rate in the US. I thought buying an AMD would be cheaper (with cheaper MOBO), but this may not be true. It is almost the same price with Intel, with pricier DDR RAM (Intel use DDR2, faster and cheaper). Somehow, my inner instinct still calls for AMD.

My Faithful Notebook

I can't choose a DELL machine if I want AMD at the current moment. I found DELL pricing is very competitive, with some configuration options, hassle free service and original software. Somehow I just didn't choose DELL (if I would bought Intel Chip), because I still like to customised my workstation. For business or not-IT literate people out there, I would advice them to always go for DELL.

Next question, should I go for budget or high performance? I used to go for mid range processor, expensive MOBO, gaming-friendly graphic card and SoundBlaster (since my dad is paying, not me). Now, I go for budget and cut off all luxuries. I choose the cheapest processor of the latest tech, Athlon 64 3000+ (Socket 939). I would like a dual core processor, but they are way too expensive. The Socket 754 seems like going to be obsolete soon, thus no point cutting the budget until so low. Least time I used to dislike MOBO with integrated stuff, but now I look for MOBO with integrated video, sound, LAN and firewire. I am not much of a gamer as I used to be, thus I ditch the expensive video card (I never bought a 3D card in my life before, wow!). I can’t differentiate sound quality, thus I ditch the SoundBlaster. ASUS A8N-VM CSM is definitely value for money.

I need at least 1GB of RAM (I buy two 512MB Kingston RAM stick to take advantage for the dual channel), DVD writer (backup of torrent download to free up some valuable HD space) and 160 GB of HD (for torrent and my video editing work). I choose Western Digital because I really dislike Seagate, and Maxtor is merging with Seagate (and where the fell did Quantum went to? I miss Fireball). I skip the floppy driver, CD drive and DVD drive.

I wanted a LCD, but they are still pretty pricy. I got a Flat CRT Monitor for less than half the price. I wanted Microsoft Natural keyboard and mouse, but there are far too pricy (perhaps someday). I wanted a CoolerMaster, but I settled for i-CUTE instead. I am really quite budget conscious, but the outcome is quite a good machine as well.

I made a mistake of buying a Firewire card, as I thought my MOBO didn’t had on-board support, RM 70 wasted (anyone wanna buy a firewire card for half the market price?). I thought I need a floppy drive to install Windows XP on SATA II HD, but it turned out not necessary (perhaps the MOBO is good). I had wrong information of Low Yat not charging service charge for credit card payment, thus I end up paying half by cash and the other half by card (cost me another RM 25). I stupidly lost RM 100 from this purchase, a costly lesson.

So, here is my White Knight in Shining Armor. I named him Camelot, hopeful of building a dream of light.

White Knight, Camelot

Too Bad I can't get cheap white colour monitor, keyboard and mouse as well

ASUS and AMD Rocks, SONY and SAMSUNG Rocks too

Camelot Specification:

• I-CUTE ATX CASING (ZL-02-WW)
• AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Socket 939)
• ASUS A8N-VM CSM
  
• 2 x Kingston PC3200 512MB DDR RAM
• Western Digital 160GB 7200RPM SATAII HD
• SONY 16X Dual Layer DVDRW
• 17” Samsung 793DF Flat Monitor
• Samsung PS2 Keyboard and Optical Mouse
• Firewire Card (A mistake)

This machine cost me RM 2,460 (with the stupid mistake of RM 100). One day I shall make back all my investment and laugh at my frustration over this mistake.

My Current Work Desk, Gonna upgrade to bigger table to accommodate the new toy