What computer upgrade has made you go WOW?

Going from an ancient ball wired mouse to a laser wireless, difference is night and day. Also going from an ancient athlon 3800+ single core to a Q6600, especially in football manager.
 
Not something I've seen so far, though I have only skimmed the thread, but going from a rubber-dome/membrane keyboard to a mechanical one really was my "WOW" moment. I went from a slim Cherry keyboard to a Filco Majestouch (a US-layout keyboard missing the numpad section) with Cherry MX Blue switches in the keys and the difference was remarkable. The thing just makes you want to type on it. My typing speed initially dropped by about 10wpm (but I think this was mostly due to having to adjust to an unfamiliar layout after over 12 years of using a UK layout) and my fingers ached for a few days, but afterwards I got back to where I had been before.

Then yesterday I got another Majestouch, this time with Cherry's MX Brown switches, in the UK layout and the numpad. The keys don't feel as snappy as the Blues, but I find it easier to type on and my typing speed has definitely seen a major improvement now. I actually wish I still had some essays or something to type up because I'm really looking for reasons to use this thing! :P

I had another "WOW" moment when I moved from Windows to Linux. The increase in speed (at the time I was running a Celeron 1.8GHz CPU with 512MB RAM and onboard graphics) and stability was astonishing, and the fact that I could do whatever I wanted with it was really appealing. Moving to Linux made me learn a lot more about my computer and really get in to a lot of things that otherwise I'd probably have missed out on due to relying on the GUI for everything, when really the command line is where the real power is at. It has increased my productivity massively and cut costs when building new computers, too. It's also given my older hardware a new lease of life and taught me all the things that I now need to know since I've purchased a hosting package with an Ubuntu VPS and am in the process of migrating 'my' forum from a free host to this new one, switching software and generally improving the whole experience.


One thing I never really noticed was mega improvements when changing hardware in my computers, but because of the situation I'm in (I work in IT and have grown up around people in IT) I've never done a massive upgrade, having always received other peoples' old parts, instead making small steps every year or so. For example, I've just gone from a Phenom 9950 to an i7 860, which hasn't made a massive difference. I've noticed one, just nothing that's made me go "ooooooh" or anything. But my friend has gone from an Athlon X2 5600+ to the 860 and is over the moon with just how fast his new system is. I'm sure if I was in the same situation, I'd have thought the same. :)
 
Seriously, people said 'wow' when going from 2gb to 4gb or ram? or xp to win7 ? Easily impressed :) (what about 4gb of ram made you go wow? )


Some 'wow' moments for me -

P100 16Meg -> celeron 400 + 128 meg

Qtest

Seeing the bump mapping demo for the matrox G450

Quake with 3Dfx voodoo

first CD-RW drive

watching fullscreen DVD video with a hollywood+ card

getting and using first optical mouse

Seeing and experiencing MP3s for the first time when a friend had a mp3 collection on his pc.
 
Memorable 'wow' moments with tech must have been:

- First CD-ROM drive, 2x IIRC with that pack of 15 games for about £200 :p

- 3DFX add-in card :cool: Loved that 'click' as it switched over

- 33.6K to Uni JANET connection (zomg)

- Holding an 8Gb microSD card (how small :confused: )

- DXVA-accelerated HD movies on a net-top computer (nvidia ION). Smooooth

And a few others no doubt but that's off the top of my head :)

*edit*

Yes! Hollywood+ decoder card - that was bloody brilliant watching fullscreen DVDs outputting DD5.1 from my computer years before everyone else's computers caught up - it kept an ancient PC 'useful' for a while as well.
 
hp7909 said:
Going by the 'Will a SSD drive make me go WOW?' thread
Click to expand...

Ooooh, I'm famous :)

Anyway :
Having my 4k upgrade for my ZX80
Going from floppy to a 40 meg hard drive on an Atari ST
1mb to 4mb upgrade on my first PC
Going from a 386DX40 to a 486DX266
Upgrading from 4mb to 16mb in the same machine
Upgrading from an AMD 2800 to a P4 3.6
My 24" Samsung monitor
My new Kingston 64 gig SSD
 
Can't remember exactly but I bought a new system when the X1900XTX came out.

Think I had a 9800XT, 512MB RAM and Sempron 2800+.

New system was a Dual Core 4400+, 2GB RAM and X1900XTX. Ohh yes :)
 
Getting a voodoo 2 and seeing Homeworld in its true glory for the first time was amazing!

Also going from 56k > 512k ADSL was staggering!
 
Seeing the difference between a 5400rpm 2.5" drive and a replacement SSD. Haven't personally made the upgrade yet but I plan to in the next few months.

The difference is phenomenal.
 
Hard to say what has upgrade has given me the greatest sense of 'wow' factor. Going from a 17" crt to a 22.2" LCD was a big step up and it took me a while to get over the size difference. It was a similar feeling when, not long ago, I went from that very same LCD to a 26" model. :D

As for components...hmm...perhaps going from a dual core cpu to a quad. A socket 939 amd 4400+ to an Intel Q6600. Awesome chip.
 
daft ati rage pro onboard to the tnt2 ultra and seeing unreal in all its glory for the first time :)

second one is probably going to my current rig from x1950pro,a64 3700+, 1 gig of cheap ddr400 and failing optical drives and failing harddrives :)
 
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Intel 486 DX66 to Intel 486 DX100 Cpu for playing Doom on, also with a Vesa IDE 4 meg cache controller superfast loading times between lvls. Those were the days.
 
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