Building Computers

Last Updated 4 Oct 07
Copyright 2007 by Stephen Vermeulen

Building your own PC these days probably will not save you any money, but it can be an enjoyable, educational and frustrating experience that will lift you above the realm of a "mere user". Here is some relevant information, maybe some day I will have added enough to this section that it is a complete stand-alone guide.

This Slashdot article asks if it makes more sense to build or to buy.

A number of web sites have pages on this topic. Some like Ars Technica have recommended parts lists.

Why would you want to build your own PC?

These are the reasons you might want to consider building your own PC rather than buying a pre-built one:

education, while you can read about this in many books or on many web sites there is no substitute for actually doing it yourself.
quality, since you will select the components that fit your needs, on the whole you should be able to produce a better quality PC than most you would buy prebuilt.
expandability, with careful selection of components the PC you build today will be upgradable in the future. This does not just apply to CPU and Memory, but also to the ability to easily add additional cards and drives to your system.
cost, by building yourself you will not be able to beat an inexpensive pre-assembled unit, but you can decide on what cost/performance tradeoffs best suit your needs. Plus you may be able to leave out some features in the initial purchase, secure in the knowledge that you can add them later
operating system, you get to choose the OS that is best for you, be it a Microsoft product, a free Linux solution or even something more esoteric like BeOS or AmigaOS.
servicability, did you ever get that sinking feeling when your machine one day did not reboot? First it was "what's wrong", then it became "how much will this cost", and finally "did I loose all my files"? Knowledge is power, and understanding how to build a PC will help ease these fears and keep you sane when the worst finally does happen.

If you are looking for some pre-assembled Linux boxes for some dedicated application some of these might fit the bill.

Building a custom rack mounted server box out of a mini-ITX motherboard and various parts.

Building an enviromentally friendly PC, discussed here on Slashdot, this also talks about what some of the special certifications (RoHS, WEEE, 80 plus) and mentions some lead-free components.

Motherboards

See my page on motherboards and small form factor PCs for more information.

BIOS

A BIOS optimization guide
This device allows one to add a "dual bios" or "bios backup" function to a standard motherboard.
Tweaking guide for the AMD 761/762 based motherboards
The Linux BIOS project, and now Stallman is calling for an open source BIOS project.
Microsoft may be getting into the BIOS game (Oct 2003)
BIOSWorld provide replacement BIOS chips, handy to know about if a BIOS flashing failed on you. In October 2003 I ordered a replacement BIOS from BIOSWorld and used their "global airmail" shipping (as I am in Canada and they are in the USA). The new chip arrived within 6 days, which is very good service.
BIOSMan also provides a similar BIOS service, although I have not ever used them.
The mother of all BIOS guides

ACPI

Here is some information on configuring the ACPI settings that most motherboards have these days.

The S3 standby power mode and how to configure it. In the Slashdot discussion of this ACPI is also mentioned. On a system that has USB devices Windows might configure itself to only enter the S1 state (instead of the S3 state) when it is told to suspend, this will result in the computer being suspended but all the fans and the drives are still spinning. This is discussed in this knowledge base article: KB841858. On some systems you might be able to add a special registry key to get suspend to use the S3 state.

More experiences with trying to get the S3 suspend (without running fans) state to work. Another article that explains a bit more about the dumppo.exe command that can be used to adjust some of the S1 versus S3 behaviour.

This article discusses some of the Win32 programming API and how it is used to schedule wakeup events (so that a sleeping computer can be ready to do something at a specific time) and how a running process can inform Windows that it needs to keep running and to defer a potential suspend event. It appears that both the S3 and S4 (sleep and hibernate) suspend states can be woken up from, and the same mechanism is used in both cases.

Mass Storage Devices

For information about various mass storage devices (hard drives, CD/DVD ROMs, burners, tape drives, RAID, and the interfaces to support them) see this page.

CPU

See my page on Computer CPUs.

Graphics Cards

Add a multi-headed display to a laptop or PC, with the Matrox TripleHead2Go.
Graphics cards with HDMI output for use in home theatre PC or PVR construction a review of the Asus EAX1600PRO and EN7600GT.
Gecube is going to make a PCI-e graphics card based on two Radeon HD 2600 XT GPUs that will have 4 DVI ports, great if you have lots of desk space!

Power Supplies

Tom's Hardware compares 21 power supplies, sounds real exciting but not much has been published on the various power supplies that are available these days.
This site includes test results for power supply efficiency - there's a reason the air coming out of your power supply may be the hottest in your computer.
A review of the Ultra X-Connect 500W power supply, this is a rather interesting unit in that you add only the cables that you need to use, which makes for a lot neater a system
A review of over 30 power supplies that calls into question their ability to perform up to specification.
The world's largest review of power supplies, this French site has a review of 105 power supplies (Apr'07)

Networking

the first affordable (Summer 2001) Gigabit networking equipment, this US4009G Dual E-Switch 9 (Internal PSU)

Gigabit Ethernet PCI Adapter

making a wireless bridge out of LynkSys equipment
some people are using the new wireless networking access points to provide free service to anyone in the area, shades of the BBS sceen without the monthly phone bills?
Bluetooth is finally starting to show up, but at only 1Mbps it is not going to displace wireless ethernet.
One man's view of problems with Bluetooth.
Netgear, DLink, Linksys, SMC make networking equipment
Not all Wi-Fi equipment interoperates well, the Wi-Fi Alliance has a list of testing results online
A Slashdot article on going gigabit in the home
TRENDnet makes a print server (TRENDnet TE100-P2U1P) that can attach one parallel port printer and two USD port printers to a LAN
Hawking Technology also makes some print servers (available from London Drugs), the HPS12U allows you to attach two USB and one parallel port printer for about CDN$130.
DLink makes the DP-300U multi-port print server, this has two parallel ports and a USB port.
Slashdot reports that a free course text on how to configure Cisco (pronounced "cheese-co" in Italy) networking equipment has been made available
July 2004 brings talk of 10Gbit ethernet. Yikes!
An Introduction to IPv6
A Slashdot book review of: Computer Networking First-Step, by Wendell Odem, ISBN: 1587201011.
The WiFi Finder plus from Kensington
Feb 2006 brings talk of 100Gbit ethernet, Zounds!
Netgear and DS2 are due to introduce a 200Mbps LAN over the home powerlines in 2006
Engadget's How-to on running your own network wiring

Memory

This site has explainations of all the commonly available types of memory. And this one has how to identify the PC133 versus PC100. The Crucial website has a memory selector that contains a lot of information about motherboards. An article on memory interleaving with SDRAM.

A guide to optimizing virtual memory (swap space) for Windows.

The Windows Memory Diagnostic program from Microsoft

In 2007 DDR3 memory started to appear, initial reports are that it is not yet worth the money.

Sound cards and Speakers

While not actually a sound card, this is a cassette tape drive that has been packaged into a 5.25" drive enclosure so you can install it in any small tower case. Handy if you want to digitize old tapes. Unfortunately at US$149.00 its pretty pricey for what you actually get. Still it makes for a rather unique sort of case mod.
A dedicated USB sound sampling device, this one is dedicated to allow the direct connection of phonographs (old record players) for those who want to digitize some old vinyl.

Printers

The Minolta Magicolor 2300DL is a colour laser printer with a reasonable price for a SOHO environment (19 Dec 02)
Configuring a lpr type TCP/IP print server from windows 2000, in this case a DLink DI-707P

Scanners

NewSoft makes some of the software that runs the Epson scanners
The world's lightest portable full page scanner
The Planon DocuPen, is a highly portable, full page black and white (and grey) scanner that will scan up to 100 pages into its internal memory at a time. You connect it to a PC via USB to extract the stored data and to recharge the built in battery. In Feb 2006 they started showing a colour version of this.

Monitors

Here's a nice little 24" LCD monitor, how soon before these reach the $1000 mark I wonder? (28 Mar 02)
Viewsonic makes some nice monitors.
Adding a 5" LCD display to a computer case as a built in monitor
Turn a VGA monitor into a TV with the Alltek Vision Nu View, it can also switch between displaying TV from the built in tuner to displaying a computer image from its VGA input.
AOC makes LCD Monitors
A review of LCD monitors from ZDNet
Prototype OLED displays have now (June 2004) reached the 40 inch size
ViewSonic's VP2290b LCD monitor would be great for digital photographs, just imagine being able to see the whole of a 6 or 8MPixel image at once at a 1:1 scale.
Walmart (Sept'04) will be offering a 23inch LCD TV from Tatung that's capable of 1280x768 resolution for US$995 (which is about a half of what current prices on other models are), so this might actually make for a nice, large, desktop monitor - and let's hope its the start of a new pricing trend for LCDs.
A review of 8 budget priced LCD monitors (Apr'05) strongly asserts that DVI is much better than straight analogue VGA input
BenQ's FP202W, a 20in wide screen with 1680x1050 pixels
Samsung's SyncMastermagic CX715NT LCD monitor includes a built-in ethernet port to allow you to control multiple machines from just a monitor.
Acer's AL2416W, a 24" widescreen LCD model
Repairing the backlight of an LCD display
In Dec'05 Dell is due to release their 3007WFP, a 30 inch LCD monitor with 2560x1600 resolution. Yummy! This is reviewed here. It gets compared by CNet to the Apple 30in Cinema Display.
Westinghouse showed this monster LCD at the CES Show in Jan'06, its a 56 inch LCD with resolution of 8Mega Pixels, so has a resolution of 3840x2160.
Westinghouse makes a range of wall mounting brackets for LCD monitors, including a "flip down" mount that can be used to attach a monitor to the underside of a kitchen cabinet (with the screen facing down so it does not get dust and grease drops settling onto it) and then to see it you just flip it down.
Samsung's SyncMaster 940UX only has a USB input, makes for an interesting way to add additional monitors to a computer. This started shipping in Oct'07, its a bit pricey, but an interesting concept.
Slashdot discusses what's wrong with the HDMI video interface standards

Projectors

AVPartner has quite a few video projectors from a good range of manufacturers

Modems

Keyboards, Mice, MP3 Players and Stuff

Dalco has cables and other stuff
TMC has SCSI cables
Samsung's Yepp YP-30S MP3 Player, now 64M with recording capability
Muskin (the memory maker) also makes USB lash memory devices, some of which have MP3 players built in
SmartDisk also makes an MP3 player called Rover.
Keyboard, Video and Mouse (KVM) switches. A review (2-Aug-02) of recent KVM units with USB capability from Belkin and IOGear.
A KVM that does DVI video
Winic Corp. makes some Easy Transfer Boards that mount in a drive bay and provide a number of front accessible ports for your PC, they include such things as USB, FireWire, sound etc.
ABIT has one of these front-panel port devices, it includes flash-media slots too
The Cat Weasel is an interface that allows old and odd-ball formatted floppy disks to be read on a normal PC floppy disk drive, just the thing for those old Mac and Amiga disks
Here is a self-illuminated keyboard useful for those who like to hack at night, in the dark
What are all those strange keys (on the standard keyboards) used for?
Rob Galbraith reviews a number of CompactFlash Card readers.
Wacom is now turning LCD monitors into graphics tablets
A USB interfaced AC Power Controller, so your computer can pull its plug
Mediasonic.ca sells (Sept'04) a compact flash MP3 player: M3310-BLK, which plays MP3s off compact flash cards
A USB dongle that can secure your computer, probably a good idea in some environments, but we'll probably start seeing these for software copy protection soon (remember the old parallel port dongles?).
A virtual (software) KM (keyboard and mouse) switcher called Synergy, that allows you to have one keyboard and mouse in use that you use to control several computers which you select by draging the mouse pointer from one display to the rest
USBGEEK.COM has lots of USB devices
A review of in-ear head phones and their noise isolation properties. Also discussed here.
A review of wireless keyboards and mice
The Ergodex DX-1 is a user-customizable keyboard system where you can taylor the key placement to your own needs.
The Rio Karma 20GB MP3 player has an ethernet interface in its docking station
In the future we might have a free-space, motion-tracking input system, like this one.
Another blue tooth keyboard, perhaps usable with the Tungsten?
The Global Talk, an electronic translator that can also play MP3s, record voice and act as an eBook
The USB MP3 Capsule, this offers similar minimal controls to the iPOD Shuffle but uses a SD card to hold the data, so you can swap cards for more tunes
Creative's Prodikey PC keyboard (crossed with a midi keyboard) goes USB
Wireless USB hubs will be available in 2006, with one of these you can locate some USB devices at a distance from your computer without having to run cables to them. The Ripcord (made by Staccato Communications) is aimed at connecting hard drives. And it appears that Belkin will also have some wireless USB products. Belkin talks about this covering a room, so the question remains open as to how well this will penetrate walls. And then there's also bound to be some interesting security issues...
Pinnacle's PCTV puts a digital TV tuner on a USB stick.
The Power Watch fan controller includes LCD displays of temperature and various front panel USB and A/V ports, but appears to take two 1/2 height drive bays.
Sigma's USB/Audio hub combines a USB "sound card" with a USB hub giving you the usual audio inputs and outputs on your hub instead of on some inaccessible part of your computer case.
All sorts of strange USB gadgets
MultiSwitch, should be the first USB sharing hub, this will let multiple computers share a single USB device.
Powered USB, a new standard to allow USB to provide more power to peripherials (discussed here on Slashdot). While this would certainly be a good thing as it would reduce the number of little external power supplies, the current implementation sounds quite silly.
Belkin has a rather clever idea: put a USB hub or iPod docking station into the 2 inch cable holes in your desk
Ergo Key has a number of ergonomic keyboard designs
Stanton makes a USB-interfaced turntable for reading your old vinyl LPs into a PC. It looks rather like this Numark TTUSB turntable.
Brando makes lots of USB devices, hubs, card readers and strange toys
Belkin is producing a network USB hub, this allows you to access a USB device across a network
The WiFi Detective from StarTech.com is a portable WiFi sniffer with an LCD display that shows information about wireless access points it finds.
Icron is going to build a device that will allow a USB2.0 peripherial to be connected to a computer via the AC power line
SealShield makes washable keyboards and mice, discussion of cleaning regular keyboards here.
The Ezkey mouse and keypad combo, this looks rather neat, but I wonder if it will just be an excercise in frustration, something akin to the "broom with integrated dustpan" where you have a broom with a dustpan that is permanently attached at the other end of the handle. Still, for entering a bunch of numbers into a spread sheet or accounting program, it might well work.
Keyspan's USB 2.0 server, attach two USB devices to this and then attach them to your network
Aug'07, Ion Audio is going to make a USB attached cassette tape deck
The Data Dock from Lindy (here on Engadget) fits in a 3.5 inch drive bay and gives you two slots that will accept device carrier trays, these trays can contain things like a 2.5 inch laptop drive, a 4 port USB hub and a flash card reader. Its a nice looking little solution, perhaps one you might want to put two of into your system. I wonder if they will make a tray that contains a 3.5 inch floppy drive or old zip drive?
The Bamboo line of input tablets from Wacom look pretty nice and some are reasonably priced.
USB 3 is targeted to appear in 2008 and will be 10 times as fast as USB 2.0, discussed here on Slashdot.
Belkin's network-attached USB hub has finally started shipping, now you can place USB devices anywhere you can get your network to.

Time

The Network Time Protocol (NTP) home page (has a nice little icon for a clock in the browser address bar)

Video Recorders (PVRs) and Digitizers

Sub-systems to digitize audio and video are starting to become more full-featured and useful these days.

The new (started shipping in Dec'01) Video Blaster Digital VCR from Creative, is getting well recieved (see the discussion thread here). Add this to a reasonable PC with some reasonable free hard drive space (about 2Gig/hour) and you have practically the equal to a Tivo. Here is a review of it on Slashdot.
A note on the Snapstream product from the Register
The Winfast TV 2000XP from Leadtek gets a positive review as a TV tuner and capture card
A Slashdot article on building a PVR with a computer
An article about how to build a Linux based PVR.
Pinnacle Systems has a few solutions (like the PCTVpro), they all appear to use a software CODEC
How about a DVD player that can access files from your computer?
The PlayTV box from Prolink Microsystems is an external converter that allows your computer monitor to be used both for computer and TV displays
A linux based PVR commercial unit from Interact-TV
The DivX (aka MPEG4) codec
Hauppage makes a number of PVR type cards for computers, including this external one that hooks up via USB.
Here is another USB2 external PVR box called the V-Stream Xpert TV-PVR
ThinkGeek lists the Personal Video Station (probably the beyond.tv3) from SnapStream as a software PVR system for PCs that already have TV tuner type hardware. This has a program guide that works in Canada.
An article on building your own PVR (this contains some good comments about the ASUS Pundit SFF case)
An article on building your own home theatre PC (HTPC) system
Build your own PVR, a site dedicated to this quest
An article on building your own PVR system from New Zealand. Includes the Pinnacle PCTVPro and Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 (the PVR-250 gets reviewed here, where they were unable to get it to work with Windows2000. And here they talk about how to active some additional settings dialogue). More user feedback on the PVR-250. And another site that's got a lot of information including other software for use with it.
Setting up a MythTV (a Linux based PVR) system. MythTV will be getting a commercial EPG (May'05)
The MediaMVP from Hauppauge, reviewed by HardwareZoom.com, is a dedicated set top box that connects to your media-server PC via 100baseT ethernet and provides decoding and display (to video and s-video) of standard media like MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 and JPEG files. Comes with a remote control for easy use. Reviewed by ZDNet UK as well, where they mention that, while currently only a single unit can be hosted by the media server PC, there is a beta version of the server software that can host up to twelve of these units. Soon it'll be time to have the house wired for gigabit ethernet! Reviewed here by PC Magazine.
LiteOn has announced (Feb'04) a DVD player with the ability to play files from your network server (like the MediaMVP)
The Gateway Connected DVD player is a DVD player with the ability to play files from your network server, it appears on Slashdot here. And is reviewed here.
The Roku HD1000 and the Pinnacle ShowCenter may be similar to the MediaMVP
The PRISMIQ MediaPlayer is another product similar to the MediaMVP, they are also talking about a future version that can also record TV signals to your server's disk. One users comments here. A small review at ExtremeTech. www.prismiq.org has more user information.
The site tv-cards.com seems to focus on the PC TV tuner card function
The AVerMedia M179 is another TV card with hardware MPEG-2 compression
Leadtek also makes PC TV cards (the WinFast series)
DVDRHelp.com has a lot of information
X-bit labs has a TV-Tuner roundup article
PVRBlog.com is all about PVR devices
The Telly home entertainment server from InteractTV
Slashdot on second generation homebrew PVR devices, particularly the ASUS Digimatrix barebones PC
The Soyo SY-P4VAL motherboard allows you to play Audio CDs and MP3s plus DVDs and use a TV Tuner direct from the BIOS
Another review of the Snapstream PVR software
The Medusa from Snapstream, they put together a PVR with 6 tuners
A digital cable HDTV card is now available
A Linux based PVR/media center PC
A review of the ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 video capture device, apparently this does no compression of the video it captures within the device
AnandTech builds a PVR box, and follows up with this article comparing their MythTV system to Microsoft's XP Media Center
Plextor is going to make (Sept'04) a USB 2.0 video capture and playback device (the ConvertX PVR PX-TV402U) that has built in hardware compression for MPEG2 and even DivX
Here's a review of TV-tuner cards that do MPEG2 compression in hardware, with follow up on Slashdot, which raises the point "why are there no cards that do MPEG4 hardware compression yet?" And gets the answer that the Plextor M402U does MPEG4 and DivX compression
AnandTech also did a review of TV capture cards
Here's the Build Your Own PVR site, this has an interesting article on putting your PVR into a regular DVD player's case so it matches the rest of your home theater equipment.
Another article on building your own PVR.
Plextor now has the ConvertX PX-TV100U which is a USB2.0 interfaced PVR box (which uses software in your computer to encode to MPEG2 and DivX as well as has a TV-tuner), hook one of these up to your PC and cable and you have a PVR (and you will quickly run out of disk space!). If you do not have a fast enough CPU then the M402U apparently does the encoding in hardware.
The Play@TV NMP-400 Network Media Player, run a network cable from your file server to this and it will play media onto your TV
Building a MythTV Box, discussed here. Clever tricks with MythTV.
The SnaZio Porta-Cinema, is a media player (see also Engadget) that can read from lots of flash media, or even hard drives and display on a TV (NTSC/PAL, composite, s-video and component) or a VGA monitor. They also have other similar items like the Net DVD Cinema, which combines a DVD player with an ethernet interface to allow you to play files from a server as well. Their Pocket Cinema can be used as a photo storage device as well as media player.
Building a quiet media room PC
Slashdot discusses PC Mag's article on building your own media center PC
How to get HD content onto your PC, mentioned here on Engadget.
Confessions of a Serial HTPC Builder
This Slashdot discussion, Where are all of the HDTV Tuners, touches on computer TV Tuner Cards with HDTV capabilities
MythTV versus TiVo
Installing MythTV with the MythDora distro
A review that compares MythTV to Vista MCE
Silicondust makes a networked digital TV tuner called the HDHomeRun which allows you to watch regular and HDTV and connects via a network connection to a PC.

Serial Ports

A USB to serial adapter project
Dontronics, makes a number of USB interface devices, including USB Oscilloscopes, serial to VGA, USB to RS232, USB to parallel, USB PIC programmers, USB to TTL I/O signals, USB to relays and some PIC controller products.
The no parts PIC programmer

Infrared Controllers

The USB-UIRT is an infrared receiver and transmitter module that attaches to a PC through USB
MyBlaster RF Series allows computers to control IR-remote controlled devices
girder is a software package that allows for IR remote control of your computer
New IRDA standards are in the works which may accelerate this interface to 100Mb/s

USB

EverythingUSB.com is a good site for USB news and product information

UPS

its possible to put together your own UPS, or you can select from a large number of commercially available ones
batterycanada.com has a number of UPS replacement batteypacks

Operating Systems

Linux, free and powerful. Making an X terminal from an old PC using Linux, and making a diskless version. Distrowatch keeps track of the various Linux distributions. This Register article compares installation experiences of Mandrake 8.1 to RedHat and SuSE. This is an article on making a lo-fat linux box so that you can run it on a low power machine. Gentoo Linux is another distribution that sounds interesting, sort of a roll-your-own approach.
This was (28 oct 01) a fast mirror site to get Debian or Mandrake Linux disks from
KNOPPIX is a bootable and run-able from CD Linux which can be of use for demos and repairing Windows boxes
Windows NT and 2000 FAQ can be found here. Information on enabling DMA mode for IDE disks under Windows NT (on 27 Dec 01 the link to the dmacheck.exe utility was broken, but if you manually cut it out of the html source and pasted it into the browser URL entry field and then edited out the space after "download" it will work, here is a fixed link) and also here. Beats me why Microsoft does not distribute this with later versions of the service packs. How to turn off the auto-updater in Win2K service pack 3. It looks like the WindowsXP Help Centre can wipe out your hard drive. Some notes on Windows XP Pro.
Windows 98
Windows 3.1
DOS or FreeDOS if you prefer. FreeDOS reached version 1.0 in Sept'06.
the USB organization
the MenuetOS which is written in x86 assembly language and fits on a floppy, if you're into x86 coding.
V Communications has some very useful utility software, including a very good boot manager, which now has integrated drive partitioning software (which can be used to reshape partitions while keeping their data intact)
Winternals makes a FAT32 driver for Windows NT, and an NTFS driver for Windows 98, and disk defragmentation software.
This Register article documents Microsoft's operating system expiration plan and their "Downgrade License Policy" (whereby you purchase a license for the new version of the product and install the old version instead).
Rebol, well not an OS but more of an Internet applications platform, founded by Carl Sassenrath who designed the Exec portion (the real multitasking kernel) of AmigaDOS
Kernel patches that allow many virtual servers to run on a single PC under Linux
If you are stuck one day and cannot find some old boot disks, have a look at Bootdisk.com, which has a variety available for download. Not sure just how legal this is...
Then there is also the FreeDOS project, which aims to make an MS-DOS replacement.
An overview of the mini-Linux distributions (Linux on a floppy)
The gentoo Linux distribution
CompactBSD from FatPort (see Slashdot) is a set of tools to build a small BSD and put it onto plash media.
DriverGuide.com is useful for finding Windows drivers for specific devices. WindowsXP-drivers.com is focused on drivers for XP systems.
DragonflyBSD another flavour of the BSD OS
If you are using Windows XP or some earlier version like 2000 or NT, it is no longer safe to install on a machine that is not behind a firewall. Seems there is so much birus activity in some areas of the net that by the time the install is done and you can start downloading patches from Microsoft you could be infected. AutoPatcher.com is trying to make the Windows updating process easier. The last time I helped install XP (May 2004) for someone the basic install took about 20 minutes and the machine was up and running, but then: the patches, the patches! It must have taken about 2 hours and countless reboots before we finally got the Windows updater to say nothing else needed patching.
Syllable, another free OS project
The SAMBA project can be used to share files to Windows boses, and it can also be used to provide a Windows Domain Controller function, thus allowing one to have domain type logins on a home LAN without having to invest in a Windows NT/2000/2003 type server. Here are some articles on setting this up: Samba NT Domain Controller, Replacing a Windows NT/2000 server, Using Samba as PDC, Quick HOWTO: Windows, Linux and Samba.
Is it possible to run Windows without any services?
The Bart PE Builder software (discussed here, reviewed here) will automatically build a stripped down version of Windows XP and place it on a USB Flash Drive so that you can use it as a rescue boot device.
Unattended, a system for automating the installation of Windows operating systems (2000, 2003, XP), patches and hotfixes and standard applications. This is a similar concept to Microsoft's Remote Installation Services (RIS). Slashdot discusses creating an XP disk image with pre-installed applications.
At the start of 2007 Microsoft started to ship their Windows Home Server edition. It gets some discussion here on Slashdot.
In Jan'07 AmigaOS 4 finally became available
It is possible to install Windows Vista from a USB Flash Drive
Microsoft has extended the phase out date for Windows XP to June 30, 2008. They did this sort of thing with with Windows 2000 when XP came out, and also with 98 when ME came out.

General Articles

Building your own PC from parts
In the future the ATX case may be replaced by the BTX case
Uses for and ways to repair damaged laptops. More on restoring old laptops.
An open source guide for the average PC user
The ins and outs of USB, an article on how USB came to be and what its capable of

Furniture

some nice looking computer chairs available from Ducky's Office Furniture in Calgary

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