On Friday night, I put together an Intel Core i7 system for a friend's son. The CPU was $300, the GeForce GT460X was $200, the Asus Socket 1366 board was $220, the case was $60, the 8 Gig if DDR3 RAM was $200. The hard drive didn't arrive yet, but I put it together anyways. I was pleasantly surprised that it was pretty painless. I booted up Ubuntu 10.04 LTS from the CD and it worked no problems (no hard drive, so I did the test drive with Ubuntu Linux). This contrasted sharply from my horrid experience with trying to put together a Phenom II 940 system for myself - the stupid AMD CPU kept on overheating. Impressive Intel.
Recently, I decided to put on the English Concert's recording of Handel's Water Music. I first heard about this recording from Bob Kerr's CBC Radio show, Off the Record. It sounds as fresh today as it did almost 30 years ago when I was in high school in Calgary. I've quite a few of the English Concert's recordings from the 1980s when the period instrument movement was picking up steam. They are all excellent - check out their recordings of the Bach Brandenburg Concerti and the Orchestra Suites. I miss the old CBC with hosts like Bob Kerr and Max Ferguson. There was also a show at 1830 called Listen to the Music. Arts National is long gone and the new CBC Radio 2 is something I don't listen to anymore (classical is pretty much out except for one show in the daytime.
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