The lovely case that Louise and I bought came today and when we tried to fit everything in it the expansion cards wouldn’t fit! Evidently the web page “forgot” to mention that it only takes low profile PCI cards, which would mean being limited to PCI or onboard graphics, as you don’t get low profile AGP cards AFAIK. It’s a moot point as Louise and I are not about to buy any other new bits of hardware.

It’s a pity, as soon as the case came I liked it. It is very small (in all dimensions, but especially depth) and the design is pretty good for a 40 PC case, i.e. almost non-hateful. The one we’re going to swap it for can take my GFX card, but is pretty ugly.

Judging by the fact that Julia (the machine) hasn’t been upgraded since 2000, when I was given a second-hand Riva TNT 2, I’m considering whether it would be worth it for us to limit our upgrade options by buying a really small case. Would we rather have a tiny PC than a super up-to-date one? Given that it’s been used for games-playing about twice in the last year, it does seem silly to buy a super-spec machine that we can’t fit in the house. However, Louise would eventually like to fit a video editing board, and I doubt they’ll come in low-profile format.