I participated in Movember last year, raising $240 (you can see the end result here), and have this year decided to do it all again, hoping to raise more than last year’s total.

The rule is simple, start clean shaven on 1st of November. Then all we’ve got to do is grow, grow, grow and put up with the ridicule or praise knowing that it is all in the name of helping other men-folk of the world.

And it is, considering around 1 in 8 men will experience depression in their lifetime, and close to 3000 men die of prostate cancer in Australia EACH YEAR. 3000 each year, and it’s increasing. That’s around the same amount of women dying of breast cancer, and how many breast cancer/pink/pink ribbon things do you see these days?

So, what it boils down to is this: I want you to sponsor me. Every little bit counts and I hope you see that it’s for a good cause. If you go to this magic little page, you can donate via that fantastic piece of plastic called your credit card, or via the ever so technologically advanced PayPal. (receipts are issued and apparantly anything over $2 is a tax deduction so it’s not all bad)

If you’re a fella and don’t mind getting pointed-and-laughed-at for a month, remembering it’s all for us guys (and let’s face it we gotta stick together), then I encourage you to join too.

You can also pay attention to this blog for progress shots, that I’ll try and upload at least once a week.

Edit 01.11.09 – see this post for progress shots, and totals of amounts raised.

It’s interesting that Dell have joined the Studio and XPS range in this unit.  The XPS range are usually aimed at the high end, gamers and people who want the best performing PCs.  The Studio range are targeted for those who want a media centre PC.  So with this release they have tried to bridge the two sectors of customers together and for the most part it seems like a good combination.

Now for the part that really matters (at least to me), the specs. Dell have chosen the new Core i7 range from Intel to power this machine.  Those of you (like me) who haven’t been paying attention for the past 6 or more months may not know there’s a new processor in town.  And not just new, it’s an entirely different CPU: Quad-core WITH Hyper-threading, built-in DDR 3 tri-channel memory controller and 8Mb of L3 cache (there is L2 cache for each core with the L3 cache shared between all cores).  It’s one of the first (that I’ve seen) Dell consumer PCs to also include Vista 64 bit edition as the only option.  No choice between the two. It’s 64 or no PC for you.  I guess it makes sense, the consumers of this desktop are likely to want more than 3Gb RAM and 64 bit is the only way to get this.  Be careful though, tri-channel means to get the best performance, memory size must be a multiple of 3.  I made this mistake and have purchased 4, but will upgrade this to 6 in the near future.  The base model video card is an ATI Radeon HD 4850 with 512Mb RAM.

With the desktop, I purchased 2 x 23″ SP2309W widescreen monitors which I will use one of for each of the desktops, along with a 19″ standard LCD.  I’ll talk about the 23″ monitors in a moment.

The machine flies.  I haven’t used a computer this fast and responsive ever, even using XP.  Of course, having the 4Gb memory is probably responsible for this.  Reviews I’ve read have put the i7 at the top of the performance charts, even beating most (if not all) of the Core 2 Quad CPUs, and definately most of the AMD Phenom 2’s.

Dell have really taken to the piano glossy black, instead of the silver and black or even the glossy white my last desktop had.  They have hidden the drives behind flip down panels, and the memory card reader, front USB, firewire and audio ports are hidden by a slide up/down panel.  They also seem to favour white LED’s, using one for both of the power and HDD indicators.  The keyboard is very flat and sleek, the keys are similar in style to that of a notebook.  It has taken me a little while to get used to the keys, especially considering the Home/Insert/End/Delete/Page Up/Page Down keys aren’t set out like a regular keyboard.  The mouse is a laser mouse with a left and right side button as well as a button to control the speed of the mouse pointer, also in glossy black, and is relatively comfortable.

The one odd thing is that the motherboard and case are of an ATX design.  Dell were one of the pioneers of the BTX form factor, however for some strange reason they have reverted back to ATX.  Why I’m not sure but I guess they have their reasons.  The fan is variable speed, and in my use, even the slightest hint of CPU load will have it spin up which you can hear quite clearly.  But since my current CPU load averages at 1%, that doesn’t happen all too often.

On to the monitor.  Again, it’s the glossy black style with white LED’s.  Max resolution is 2048 x 1152 which is higher than Full HD.  Obviously they are marketing them as a TV replacement along with the Studio desktops, given that along with the VGA and DVI connector there is an HDMI connector.  I haven’t tested HD content yet, but I hope to shortly.  The power and menu buttons aren’t really buttons.  They seem to be touch sensitive regions on the side of the monitor, mounted vertically.  Using another object in the region does not make the ‘button’ react.  The LED’s that point to the different regions also fade when not in use.  The bottom most menu lights up when an object is about 1cm away so that you know where it is.  There is also a high pitched beep whenever a button is pressed, but thankfully that can be turned off.  A webcam is also included in the top of the monitor and there are 4 USB ports (2 underneath and 2 on the left side).

Overall, I’m suitably impressed.  The performance seems to be available when needed and if I ever do decide to play a game or two, the video card will help me out. Although I went a little over budget, I think the extra expense will be worth it in the long run.  My only beef with the whole purchase is that one of the speaker options is a UK product code (and last time I checked it still is).  It just so happens that these speakers were included as part of the package when I ordered, but I have contacted Dell and they are fixing that for me.

Now I get the attraction for a home user, with many PCs acting as a media centre, thus the call for wide screens to watch DVDs and other visual media.  I’ve had a wide-screen on the past 2 notebooks and am in the process of purchasing some new wide-screens for my PCs.

However, I don’t see the point in having a wide-screen monitor sitting on an office desk.  There are going to be no wide-screen formatted media being shown on these monitors, and the software we use on them has been developed for standard aspect monitors, thus the use of a wide-screen monitor would seem redundant.

What also troubles me is that wide-screen monitors are usually cheaper than the equivalent “size” standard screen.  While I do get that it does take time for business to catch up to the consumer, just think of the number of corporates using Windows Vista, I don’t see why people who prefer standard screens should have to pay a premium over the wide-screens.

The next time we do a rollover, chances are standard screens will be long and buried and thus I thought long and hard about it, but I have had to accept wide-screen monitors in this order. The equivalent size is around $40 more expensive for a standard screen, which is not much but in an order of 50 it’s the cost of a PC in savings.  But I’m still uneasy about the whole thing.

But I’m noticing a worrying trend with the government whenever a concern is raised about the filter.  Rather than try to respond directly to the concern, the person involved will dodge the question and spin the same old rhetoric about the benefits of the policy.  There isn’t even the slightest hint of the person addressing the concern.  Senator Conroy is the worst offender and in question time he repeatedly runs out of time when spinning the same speech. However when a concern was raised by a constiuent within the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s own electorate (see letter to Mr Rudd here, and the response here) , the staffer alsofailed to respond directly to the concerns but at least they acknowledged them, saying “I am aware that the proposal for ISP filtering has has attracted some criticism from those, like yourself, who are concerned that it will lead to censorship of the internet.”  The letter then continues with 2 or so pages of the same old fluff we’ve all heard before.

My issue with the whole thing is that the government is supposed to be elected to govern by the people, for the people.  The ALP has stated that the filtering proposal was part of their platform for the election, and therefore since they were elected into government, they have a “mandate” to implement their policies. I’m not aware of the filtering policy being publicised much, if at all, so therefore, does the government really have such a mandate to implement their policy?  If the general public are raising concerns, then the government should, as part of their responsibility to act in the interests of the people in their electorate(s), address them and not await the results of a trial of such policy before commenting.  It’s such an obvious abuse of power, and it’s not what I want the government that I elected to represent me to continue doing.  It could be said that both sides do abuse this power, but in reality they should be listening to the people they have been elected to serve, and not push their own agenda, regardless of any such percieved mandate.