Linux PC (now passed along to Brian)

This was the 64-bit dual core AMD 5000+ machine with 2GB of RAM, 256MB of dedicated graphics and a fast SATA hard drive. I bought it (reduced) in the Millbrook branch of Comet in March 2008. It started life as a dinky little HP slimline Media PC (but was sadly crippled by the foolish decision to ship it with a disgusting piece of dreadful software called Vista)...

You can see it in audio action here, back in July 2008 (when I still had what some folk regarded as an over-complicated A/V system) ...

It was still a Vista Media PC then. Of course, web serving isn't particularly tasking, (let alone multitasking), and uses only about 1% of its capability. There's still a TV tuner and decent sound card in there somewhere just itching to entertain me. So currently I foresee it ending up in the reading room upstairs, possibly as a MythTV system, but there's no rush. For the last couple of years, therefore, it's been quietly chugging away down in the living room running Ubuntu Server edition 10.4 and serving all my internal web pages.

So it would have continued to do, had Len not neatly demonstrated to me just how little CPU use is consumed by a web server serving just one chap living peacefully on his own. I now intend, therefore, to give it a heart transplant (with a shiny new 1TB drive) and re-invigorate it with a dash of Ubuntu 11.4 and the smart new Unity desktop. I've already had a bit of a play with this...

... and whenever the next round tuit happens along I shall perform the surgery. Of course, if I wait just another month or so, the so-called Oneiric Ocelot will be with us... It seems quite fitting, somehow, to put a dwarf-sized leopard on to a dwarf-sized desktop PC.

Tuit acquired. It's now upstairs as predicted and currently running 11.4 desktop edition. (Picture here.)

Next tuit acquired. It's now running 11.10 desktop edition. (New picture here.)

It turned out Unity wasn't for me. We parted company amicably.