Hey Know-It-Alls (or has Padre officially renamed us doge yet? Much Know! So Tech! )

[G+_John Mink]

Hey Know-It-Alls (or has Padre officially renamed us doge yet? Much Know! So Tech! )

 

Digressions aside, I'm finding my brain is working entirely too hard trying to track what hardware is in what machine (despite having built them myself).  Besides having functional brains, how do you people keep track of what hardware is in what project?  This would be starting with computers (which components are currently in which machine) and potentially migrate to other things i've already forgotten.

 

I started doing an excel sheet, but that seems like a terrible idea!  I feel like there's got to be better stuff out there, but a quick search on inventory management software has my eyes spinning.

 

Any advice is appreciated!

[G+_Timothy Waters]

Are you wanting to know specific model parts for more than one machine?

[G+_John Mink]

Timothy Waters not just the machine, but specific components in that machine.

[G+_Timothy Waters]

I am assuming that components would by type of things like HDD, video, CPU, etc?

[G+_John Mink]

Exactly

[G+_Matt D]

How many projects do you have going on at one time? For simple notes and parts list, I use a combination of Evernote for clipping web articles and Google Docs for build logs. To see what hardware's already in a computer, I use HWMonitor by CPUID.

[G+_John Mink]

Matt D the concern isn't just the current projects, but I want to keep the info on what I've done in the past.  It's hard enough remembering a build from a few days ago, but a few years ago?  It's hopeless!

[G+_Timothy Waters]

Yeah, I am with Matt on this one. A nicely setup Google Spreadsheet would be the way to go. Other than that, you are looking at going with some type of Database structure.

[G+_John Mink]

Timothy Waters I'd be fine going with a database structure, I just feel like i'm recreating the wheel if I start from an empty database!

 

But I guess i'll go custom spreadsheet/database.  It seems like most existing tools are so overkill they're actually inconvenient or confusing for what i'm trying to do.