The computer upgrade has gone really well, but it has been quite an adventure. The coffee cups on the table tell the story — lots of early mornings and late nights! The early results have been very promising on two fronts: 1) Individual maps can be produced two to three times faster than the original machine. 2) I was inspired during the upgrade to write a workshop paper for ICSE 2009 documenting my usage of Microsoft Office OneNote to bring topocreator.com from idea to live e-commerce website!
All that is left at this point is to replace the graphics card I am currently borrowing with ATI’s top “entry-level” card, the ATI HD 4670, which should be arriving on Tuesday. Since ATI is now owned by AMD, this is a great way of spreading the love around between processor manufacturers since everything else in the system is Intel-based.