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Windows XP was first released on October 25, 2001, and over 400 million copies were in use in January 2006. It was succeeded by Windows Vista, which was released to volume license customers on November 8, 2006, and worldwide to the general public on January 30, 2007. Direct OEM and retail sales of Windows XP ceased on June 30, 2008.

So according to the above, Windows XP is, at most, 3 years past the time it was last sold retail.

A friend just bought a new computer with XP Home this week....

That's true.. I'm looking right now at a 17" Dell monitor and it says Dimensions (HxWxD) 16.4" x 15.9" x 16.5"

You can get now a 19" Asus VW198T LCD running natively at 1680x1050 that has the dimensions Phys.Dimension(WxHxD): 444x368x210 which in inches means roughly 17.48" x 14.48" x 8.26". So, you get higher resolution, you don't damage your eyes so much, only for an extra inch in width, but I guarantee you when you see the space that was once lost because of the CRT's depth, you won't regret it.

The only downside I see is you get about one less inch in height. If this bothers you, you can opt for benq E2200HDA which has the following dimensions: 20.5" x 16.05" x 7.35" but packs a resolution of 1920x1080 inside those 22 inches.

I don't endorse any of the LCD displays above, I just browsed my local IT store's site right now and picked these as having cheap price and high res / diagonal inches

There are loads of 22" LCDs with 1920x1080. How about this: Link.

The screen aspect ratio is locked at 16:9 even though no such monitor exists for PC

While I won't argue that it's stupid to have a locked aspect ratio, you are very much mistaken in your claim. Even if we ignore the fact that you can easily hook up your PC to your full HD tv or projector, there are quite a few 16:9 monitors on the market.

BenQ has at least one series of Full HD monitors
Samsung has at least one full HD monitor
Acer has 8 models tagged as 16:9 HD
Fujitsu Siemens has at least two models

BenQ makes some interesting keyboards and mice, including some in partnership with BMW design group.

The NEC 1765 is a really stunning looking monitor both on and off - you need to see it in person to appreciate it, the best looking LCD i found.

The rest of the PC was plain old AMD-Shuttle, finding a classy, suitable for an executive type PC case is really hard.

Also check BenQ and Concord cheap line of megapixel cameras. The quality is hit and miss, but they do have some some gems, specially Benq. A friend of mine bough a cheap (sub-$200) 4mp camera from them and the image quality was exceptional.

PS: I was once looking for a webcam and came across a small Concord webcam which is actually a digital camera (VGA sensor, but takes pictures, video and audio) which can be unhooked off it's tripod and carried arround. I had a lot of fun with that one :)

Yes! LCD refresh rates are getting so fast now that motion blurs are now a thing of the past.

Many of these products are selling like hot potatoes:
http://www.benq.com/display/lcd_fp783.html, http://www.benq.com/display/lcd_fp992.html, http://www.benq.com/display/lcd_fp231w.html

Plus, with the recent drop in prices, it is time to ditch your CRT and get LCD. Best to buy it now and beat the holiday rush!

Yes! LCD refresh rates are getting so fast now that motion blurs are now a thing of the past.

Many of these products are selling like hot potatoes:
http://www.benq.com/display/lcd_fp783.html, http://www.benq.com/display/lcd_fp992.html, http://www.benq.com/display/lcd_fp231w.html

Plus, with the recent drop in prices, it is time to ditch your CRT and get LCD. Best to buy it now and beat the holiday rush!

Yes! LCD refresh rates are getting so fast now that motion blurs are now a thing of the past.

Many of these products are selling like hot potatoes:
http://www.benq.com/display/lcd_fp783.html, http://www.benq.com/display/lcd_fp992.html, http://www.benq.com/display/lcd_fp231w.html

Plus, with the recent drop in prices, it is time to ditch your CRT and get LCD. Best to buy it now and beat the holiday rush!

Ick. Infared.

What's wrong with infrared? Back when I bought the keyboard I'm now using with my MythTV box, RF wasn't really an option because none of the RF keyboards available at the time had sufficient range. Yes, you need line-of-sight to the receiver for the keyboard to work, but that's true of all of your other remotes too. The 30' range is nothing to sneeze at, and it runs for months on a couple of AAs. It looks like a notebook keyboard with a thumbpad on the right and a couple of mouse buttons on the left.

(I bought mine 4 years or so ago at the local PC Club. It looks like some vendors are still selling them, too...this one is selling them for just $20.)

Actually, Benq supposedly released the first 8X +R drive in August. I came across this info when I bought their 4X +R drive last month and went to their site to make sure it had the latest firmware installed.

obPressRelease

I too have a Zaurus SL-5500, which is quite capable of running various games processor-wise, but I find the buttons, being designed for PDA navigational use, are not well suited for gaming. I've compared Super Mario Brothers 2 on my Zaurus under ZFCEU to a friend's GBA running the same game, and the GBA just plays better. Even though the buttons are similar in placement and number, they just weren't well engineered for gaming.

As for Doom, congratulations! I use it to show off the Zaurus processing and graphics abilities, but never bothered playing much due to a lack of buttons to assign for strafe, etc... What did you do in the keymapping to make it playable with one hand?

Of course, others have noted similar problems on other PDAs, and there exist gamepad clip-ons for iPaqs now.