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Uhhhhhh...dude? You buy a console, whose very purpose is "DRM...in a box!" and you then cry that you want Freedom! on it? Dude, to use a /. car anaolgy that is like buying a Kia and then bitching it won't pull your boat.

They have these things called "nettops" that are the same SFF and actually DO give you "freedom" to run whatever the hell you want. They even have these nice little cubes called Shuttles that will let you use any size CPU, from a lowly Sempron all the way to a quad, even add a PCIe x16 GPU if you don't like the onboard and up to 8Gb of RAM for 64bit OSes!

But buying a DRM box and then bitching because you don't have any freedom is just nuts. You knew what it was before you bought it, nobody twisted your arm or put a gun to your head. Bitching about lack of freedom from a DRM console is like buying strawberries and then bitching they aren't bananas. if you want freedom buy a product that allows you to have freedom. But if you buy DRM in a box expect the DRM to not allow you to do what you want, which is kinda the whole point of DRM in the first place. But make no mistake, all a console is is DRM in a box. Nothing more, nothing less.

I, for one, will never buy another OCZ product again. I bought a "Solid Series" a little over a year ago when newegg reviews (about a dozen at the time) only had good things to say about them. They were pretty fast in the beginning.

About half-a-year later, the thing started stuttering for seconds on end, much worse than any non-broken spinning disk I encountered. It was a little over half full, that's it. Turns out that they put in crappy controllers, I guess. Not fully sure. Now the company says they're not good at stand-a-lone performance, suddenly they called it a "value series", and that you should "upgrade" to a premium series for that, but they're still good for arrays and the like.

They certainly didn't assert or say that anywhere at the time of sale, it's just a belated excuse for shipping a crap product to people that paid good money.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227373

They even go on the reviews to excuse for this. But of course they don't lift a finger to fix the problem. Stick with Intel or some reputable company.

Hmm...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&Description=hdmi%20cable&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&Order=PRICE

Looks to me like HDMI cables cost about $6.

Look at some of the less expensive "no name" eReaders out there. They don't look quite as nice as the big boys (Sony, Amazon, B&N, etc), but you can put whatever you want on them. Here are some good options:

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=782&Tpk=ereader

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16858653001

Look at some of the less expensive "no name" eReaders out there. They don't look quite as nice as the big boys (Sony, Amazon, B&N, etc), but you can put whatever you want on them. Here are some good options:

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=782&Tpk=ereader

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16858653001

I've been wondering. Does the copy of Chaos Theory on Newegg.com not "feature" StarForce as one reviewer said? I've only played it on the PS2 and would like to replay it, but I got rid of my PS2.

I used some cat6 ethernet I bought at newegg for cheap, and already crimped. Then I bought some of these from newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812993025. I have seen other sites that carry them too, and they worked great in the plates that I got at home depot. Finally, a trip to home depot for some low voltage boxes and some modular wall plates. I have done 2 rooms for around $40 bucks, but most of my cost was the couplers and tools. The boxes and plates are really cheap and I also picked up a bag of blank plugs and some coax cable plugs.

It helped that I have a drop ceiling, full basement, but Lowes sells a long flexible drill bit just for doing wiring. I ended up putting a gig-e switch in my office and one in my basement. I don't know how fast they are since I only have one gig-e computer, but the switches say they connect at gig-e.

I have some photos of what I done on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianjpugh/sets/72157621578462074/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianjpugh/sets/72157622296384977/

Sure, youre dropping around 100 bucks per drop (less if you go with actiontec), but it saves you time and energy doing a cat5 conversion. The bitrates are pretty good too, although that depends on the quality and length of your wiring.

Powerline AV isnt bad, you can get a steady 40-50mbps with it, but that's pretty much wireless-N speeds, which is a lot cheaper.

Since when did we stop using Coax for networking? Granted Cat5/6 is the way to go but back in the day it was not uncommon.

Seems like it's still kicking in one for or another...

Because you're saying single core CPUs have now been almost phased out - and that's not quite right. They have been almost phased out of new PCs, but in terms of the overall install base of PCs, there are still a lot of single core machines out there.

Sorry, should have been more specific...I meant they have been mostly phased out of new PCs. The reason I went with 2011 as a timeline is because of how inexpensive dual cores are becomming. Hell, AMD's top-of-the-line dual core CPU can be had for just over $100, with their quad core CPU's starting at under $100. I think it's a fairly safe assumption that by the end of 2011, just about anyone who plays modern games on their PC would have at least a dual core system. But who knows, with how powerful video cards are getting nowadays (and being able to handle physics processing in hardware), CPUs are becomming less important.

Because you're saying single core CPUs have now been almost phased out - and that's not quite right. They have been almost phased out of new PCs, but in terms of the overall install base of PCs, there are still a lot of single core machines out there.

Sorry, should have been more specific...I meant they have been mostly phased out of new PCs. The reason I went with 2011 as a timeline is because of how inexpensive dual cores are becomming. Hell, AMD's top-of-the-line dual core CPU can be had for just over $100, with their quad core CPU's starting at under $100. I think it's a fairly safe assumption that by the end of 2011, just about anyone who plays modern games on their PC would have at least a dual core system. But who knows, with how powerful video cards are getting nowadays (and being able to handle physics processing in hardware), CPUs are becomming less important.

Considering you can get a 27" at 2048 x 1152 for $450 right now, I'd save myself the $1000 or so and just get something like this.

The closest I've gotten do far: is this Acer from Amazon with a choice of XP or Android.

Asus used to have a bunch of them.

NewEgg just has two now - which have a BIG red note above saying they're deactivated or some such.

To be a Slashdot pedantic, you are wrong. BUT I used find a shit load of Linux notebooks at both locations and now I just see a couple, so YOU WILL be right even to the pedantics in a few weeks it looks.

I agree -- it's not practical. Just look around: there's no other products that manage to shrink an antenna down in size, and still operate at 2.4GHz, are there?

Given the severe lack of anyone doing stuff like this, it must be impossible to use an antenna shorter than a quarter-wavelength for anything, ever. I mean, it's obvious, isn't it?

its apples and oranges, pun intended. It is unreasonable to assume you have to buy an apple monitor with the mini, just buy a 125$ 20" from newegg, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009158 , and a keyboard/mouse combo for another 20$. Without question, out of the box, Macs are geared for creativity, aka iLife, which is just about useless in an enterprise environment. But also out of the box you have iCal, mail, address book, itunes, preview and time machine.
I will state upfront, i have used win7 for less than 15 minutes of my life so I am not up to date with windows. Also I learned just now that XP has an address book.
I think that for out of the box something that syncs your phone contacts, calendar and mail as well as macs do is pretty awesome. Also something(itunes) that can sync that with your email account(gmail, yahoo at least) with your contacts is very nice. Our of the box you have preview with opens pdfs, pretty much any type of images, also OS X makes previews of psds, docx, xlsx, etc available in the finder cover flow. To my knowledge windows does not do this without the help of adobe reader or the previews like OS X at all.
Time machine can backup locally(usb disk) or over a network to a server drive, and restoring after a HD crash or to new hardware is very simple and easy. I have upgraded the hard drive in my MBP and it was an amazing feeling when i just hit restore after installing snow leopard and a few hours later I was back to where I was when I last shut down my mac, its like nothing happened.

Nice to haves, but not out of the box are, iWork and mobile me. MS Office business edition(no student and home for enterprise which is still $150)for mac is $400, http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2008/shop-now.mspx. iWork is 80$, excuse the possible bias but ms office for mac is overpriced and crippled. It seems office 2007 small business($450) is closer to mac ms office business in features but office standard is the most comparable to iWork and matches the mac ms office cost at $400. Again you cannot use the cheaper home and student editions on windows, you have to go full versions in business. So for the average cubicle worker (non engineer/science type) word excel power point, pages, numbers, keynote will do just fine.
MobileMe: nice to sync on the go if you did not sync over usb before you left, or if you drop your iphone in a puddle after you added meeting times and contact information.

Worth noting, mac hardware is the same price in their business store, http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313?cid=AOSA10000022131, as their regular store. I will leave it to the parent author to provide a link to a 500$ system with windows, a 20" monitor from a business computer division of a company.

So out of the box all you have to install on a mac is iWork, which you can order preinstalled, not nearly the same case for windows.

So cost for average cubicle worker(excuse my lingo), windows = 500hardware + 400office = 900$, mac = 700+80+125+20 = $925, negligible difference IMHO, I leave the final score up to you.

That is why I love my 925, it only uses 95w, is whisper quiet, and takes any job I throw at it with nary a complaint. I mated it to an ultra cheap 4650 1Gb GPU and so far every game I've thrown at it has been nothing but high framerates and pretty picture, and you can't beat $700 for a PC with 8Gb of RAM, a Tb of HDD, dual burners and a quad. if your board can take one I highly recommend the 925 to future proof your machine. That 8Mb of total cache makes for a damned good video transcoder. Of course if you don't transcode you can get a Propus 2.6GHz for a cheap $99, and after building a couple for customers I can say for most jobs they are truly scary fast and quiet.

As for "speed and snappiness" even on the smaller AMD chips, have you thought about showing your customers one of these? With the free Junction Magic you can set the My Docs and program files to be on a larger HDD and leave the SSD for the OS. These puppies will max out a Sata II connection, and by moving the two most overfilled folders to a large cheap HDD you can get nice long life from the SSD and still enjoy the crazy OS responsiveness you get from SSD without having to break your wallet.

After setting a couple of these up for customers and seeing the truly insane speeds they were getting on even the lowest X2s and X3s I'm probably gonna pick up one for myself. I already would have but Valentine's day is right around the corner and that is one of the "Thou shall not" along with thou shall not forget her BDay or Xmas, and Thous shall not answer honestly if she asks if she looks fat in that dress. But I doubt ARM will get more than the "browser in a box" tiny niche because of the No Windows problem. Everyone just seems to love the new Windows 7 and folks that buy Win 7 for their new machine end up coming back and having me upgrade their second box to Win7 as well. Not having Windows will leave ARM to the cheap netbook niche IMHO.

That is why I love my 925, it only uses 95w, is whisper quiet, and takes any job I throw at it with nary a complaint. I mated it to an ultra cheap 4650 1Gb GPU and so far every game I've thrown at it has been nothing but high framerates and pretty picture, and you can't beat $700 for a PC with 8Gb of RAM, a Tb of HDD, dual burners and a quad. if your board can take one I highly recommend the 925 to future proof your machine. That 8Mb of total cache makes for a damned good video transcoder. Of course if you don't transcode you can get a Propus 2.6GHz for a cheap $99, and after building a couple for customers I can say for most jobs they are truly scary fast and quiet.

As for "speed and snappiness" even on the smaller AMD chips, have you thought about showing your customers one of these? With the free Junction Magic you can set the My Docs and program files to be on a larger HDD and leave the SSD for the OS. These puppies will max out a Sata II connection, and by moving the two most overfilled folders to a large cheap HDD you can get nice long life from the SSD and still enjoy the crazy OS responsiveness you get from SSD without having to break your wallet.

After setting a couple of these up for customers and seeing the truly insane speeds they were getting on even the lowest X2s and X3s I'm probably gonna pick up one for myself. I already would have but Valentine's day is right around the corner and that is one of the "Thou shall not" along with thou shall not forget her BDay or Xmas, and Thous shall not answer honestly if she asks if she looks fat in that dress. But I doubt ARM will get more than the "browser in a box" tiny niche because of the No Windows problem. Everyone just seems to love the new Windows 7 and folks that buy Win 7 for their new machine end up coming back and having me upgrade their second box to Win7 as well. Not having Windows will leave ARM to the cheap netbook niche IMHO.

That is why I love my 925, it only uses 95w, is whisper quiet, and takes any job I throw at it with nary a complaint. I mated it to an ultra cheap 4650 1Gb GPU and so far every game I've thrown at it has been nothing but high framerates and pretty picture, and you can't beat $700 for a PC with 8Gb of RAM, a Tb of HDD, dual burners and a quad. if your board can take one I highly recommend the 925 to future proof your machine. That 8Mb of total cache makes for a damned good video transcoder. Of course if you don't transcode you can get a Propus 2.6GHz for a cheap $99, and after building a couple for customers I can say for most jobs they are truly scary fast and quiet.

As for "speed and snappiness" even on the smaller AMD chips, have you thought about showing your customers one of these? With the free Junction Magic you can set the My Docs and program files to be on a larger HDD and leave the SSD for the OS. These puppies will max out a Sata II connection, and by moving the two most overfilled folders to a large cheap HDD you can get nice long life from the SSD and still enjoy the crazy OS responsiveness you get from SSD without having to break your wallet.

After setting a couple of these up for customers and seeing the truly insane speeds they were getting on even the lowest X2s and X3s I'm probably gonna pick up one for myself. I already would have but Valentine's day is right around the corner and that is one of the "Thou shall not" along with thou shall not forget her BDay or Xmas, and Thous shall not answer honestly if she asks if she looks fat in that dress. But I doubt ARM will get more than the "browser in a box" tiny niche because of the No Windows problem. Everyone just seems to love the new Windows 7 and folks that buy Win 7 for their new machine end up coming back and having me upgrade their second box to Win7 as well. Not having Windows will leave ARM to the cheap netbook niche IMHO.

$300:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116718

(That's for a full copy of the most expensive workstation edition, not an upgrade)

I suppose some fool payed $500 for it somewhere.

Newegg: $105 I'm still a little confused though as to what, exactly it is that you don't get with the system builder edition that you would get with the full retail version.

Ars Technica had a nice article explaining the differences when Vista was released: "Buying OEM versions of Windows Vista: the facts"

My summary (in order of importance):

• An OEM or "system builder" version of Windows is tied to the computer on which it is initially installed. Unlike retail versions, OEM versions cannot be transferred to another computer, even if you remove it from the first computer.
• OEM versions include either 32-bit Windows or 64-bit (not both), so you must choose before you buy. Retail versions come with both.
• OEM versions cannot be returned once opened. That makes the 32/64 bit decision important.
• No pretty box, no user manual, and no free support. Experienced computer users don't need that stuff, anyway. OEM users still get free windows updates, MS's support web site, knowledge base, and paid support options.
• OEM versions only allow clean installations. No "in place upgrades" are allowed, which no sane techie would do anyway. Windows Easy Transfer is available for those that want to easily transfer files, settings, and accounts.

To me, the only important limitation is the no-transfer limit. However, since the OEM version is roughly half the price of the full retail (not upgrade) version, I don't think it's a big deal. Also, I've read in many forums (including Slashdot) that MS will provide a new activation code for OEM versions if you say you "had to replace the motherboard" on your PC.

Newegg: $105 I'm still a little confused though as to what, exactly it is that you don't get with the system builder edition that you would get with the full retail version.

For less money, you could get yourself one of these. I bet it's also more user-friendly than either the trackpad or a touchscreen.

glxinfo | grep "OpenGL version"
OpenGL version string: 3.2.0 NVIDIA 190.42

That came with my onboard motherboard (which strangely has gone up in price since I bought it over a year ago)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131318

Uhhhh dude, or dudette as the case may be? The chips in the article were both under 100w, and most AMD chips except the ones that are built for OCing, are less than 100w. The most power hungry IIRC are 125w for the current lineup, and I can say from experience that my 925 after 8 hours of transcoding at 100% load was only running at 109f on the stock cooler, so I'm afraid you are quite off on your estimates.

I have been building both Intel and AMD boxes for many years now, and I can say thanks to the new Cool & Quiet that AMD chips stay quiet and really don't suck much in the way of juice, even on stock cooling. I have been running this machine since I came in at 3PM (it is currently midnight here) with dozens of tabs open, lots of video watching, two transcodes, and many file transfers, and I haven't see CoreTemp (great free tool BTW, with 64bit support and an easy to use tutorial on setting autostart under Windows 7) get above 90f the entire night, with 83f being the temp for 99.995% of the time. So while the older AMD chips did run pretty hot (burned a few TBirds in my day) the new chips are quite cool and efficient.

Their benchmarks seem decent. The Athlon II X4 620 is a solid performer.

And the Athlon II X4 630 2.8Ghz 4-core processor is getting great reviews at newegg with good potential for overclocking, even with the stock cooler.
br> There's a few great motherboard/CPU combo deals going on right now at newegg. QuadCore for $170 and dual-core for $90.

Their benchmarks seem decent. The Athlon II X4 620 is a solid performer.

And the Athlon II X4 630 2.8Ghz 4-core processor is getting great reviews at newegg with good potential for overclocking, even with the stock cooler.
br> There's a few great motherboard/CPU combo deals going on right now at newegg. QuadCore for $170 and dual-core for $90.

Their benchmarks seem decent. The Athlon II X4 620 is a solid performer.

And the Athlon II X4 630 2.8Ghz 4-core processor is getting great reviews at newegg with good potential for overclocking, even with the stock cooler.
br> There's a few great motherboard/CPU combo deals going on right now at newegg. QuadCore for $170 and dual-core for $90.

My HTPC has an Athlon II X4 620 running pretty well in a small antec HTPC case on a 785G mATX motherboard on a 350W PSU- probably wouldn't handle a discrete graphics card (integrated ATI GPUs handle 1080p h264 playback fine), but it wouldn't fit anyway. Also, my work PC is an intel core i7 920 housed inside a shuttle. Quad-cores are now being squeezed into laptops too. Needless to say, there's hardly any need for a large tower with loud cooling, unless you need the space and/or want to overclock.

I'm not sure at this point that a PS3 is significantly more powerful than a cheap computer, although the BluRay, and a few other special features would be expensive to replicate.

Blu-Ray drive from Lite-On for $69.99 at Newegg. Blu-Ray got really cheap, even burners are only $150-$200.

Or for just $9 more you can have a tablet input. I gave one of these to my youngest and he just loves it. Good luck on ever getting that kid to go back to working with just pen and paper or a keyboard and mouse. It is surprisingly accurate and sensitive, allowing him to not only write fluently, but to draw freehand and make some truly sharp artwork. me? I am lucky if I can draw a straight line.

But I just don't see the point of spending $30 on this with no PC input, when for $9 more you can have a tablet input. I'm sure the level of sensitivity on the tablet probably kills this thing, and unlike this it doesn't "die" after x number of erases.

My Asus eee netbook meets most of these specs, cost me $290 and I can carry it with me.

or - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2032280010%201141843301%201143618759&ShowDeactivatedMark=False

Sure, moan about the < 3GB of memory, but here are two points that will change that. 1. They start at a bit under half the price. 2. If you are running an Atom processor, most of what you will be doing won't need 3GB of memory...especially with Linux.

Even a 35$ card can do hardware decoding of h264 and VC1 bitstreams... I don't know about nVidia models but I know about ATI: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048%204025%20106792627&name=Radeon%20HD%204000%20series

xvid is decoded in software on the systems you mention, and that means it uses a lot of battery or mains power for this. There are ARM processors that now include hardware decoder for h264 and these processors will appear in devices as they become cheaper due to volume of sales.

I never said xvid is dead, I quite like it myself, but when I do backups of DVDs it's way easier (for me) to just encode with h264 and then mux the original soundtracks and subtitles with the h264 video into a MKV file. AVI doesn't do that (it's not capable) and that's why Handbrake decided to drop it as an output container.

Agreed. I ordered the 5850 just last night. The bundled deal at Newegg comes with a free 600 watt Thermaltake power supply (limited time of course: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102857). I'll be gaming at 1920x1080, so this should be quite enough for me for a fair while (though I wish I could've justified a 2 GB card).

Normally I wouldn't do $300 for a vid card. I've paid the $600 premium in the past and that made me realize that the $150 - $200 cards do just fine. Last night's expenditure was to top out this system (card + 8 GBs RAM). Basically I'm betting on it lasting me (as a gaming machine) until DDR3 & related technologies drop to reasonable prices.

Perhaps by then nvidia will have a mid-to-low range version of this new toy that's worth buying.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103228&Tpk=acer%20aspire%20revo

plus a MCE remote kit and XBMC live CD.

you have a XBMC standalone box that will play 1080p HD AND HDMI out.

Same pricepoint (well close, $30.00 over when you buy the MCE remote and receiver.

For $26, you can measure the power of each device on and off and figure out who the actual power hogs are:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882715001

Then at least you'll save wear-and-tear on your plugs for devices that are really off when turned off. (Like your washer and dryer, for example. I would be surprised if they draw power when off.)

Actually i just paid $17 with free shipping for a 100 pack of blank DVDs, so i honestly don't see how they could get much cheaper. I do wish HD-DVD would have stuck around as a backup medium, because I don't see BD ever gaining enough traction for the price to become low enough to make them worth the effort.

How about a Red Button of Death.

If you hit the red button on this video card while its on it will corrupt the video cards bios. Luckily its got two.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127306

Best Buy has decent prices for the things consumers pay attention to, and indeed something like three years ago Best Buy stopped the insane upselling pressure they were putting their customers under, but buyer beware for the things that consumers don't initially pay attention to, or initially comparison shop on.

(Mon$ter Priced) cables, spare Lithium-Ion batteries, or returning/troubleshooting issues, those are where Best Buy will still try to screw you on. You don't have to take my word for it. Just dig up your last Best Buy receipt where you purchased a cable as well, and then compare it to the price you would have paid had you ordered it online through resellerratings.org or newegg.com.

I know, my GF says I tend to devolve into technobabble when it comes to hardware and troubleshooting She is pretty good about reminding me that not everyone looks at PCs the way that jocks look at Mustangs,LOL.

But I can guess where you may have had trouble and can point out a good little tool to help you hunt down weird bugs in the future. The most likely source of trouble was sadly the Creative card. I have gone so far as to stop selling these cards to my customers because in the last few years their drivers and support have really gone downhill. I recommend the Asus Xonar cards for my customers and will be putting one in to the new PC my band is getting. Their drivers are really solid.

I have to agree on Windows 7. I have switched myself and many of my customers over and we all love it. The "smart troubleshooting" seems to fix a lot of little errors some of my customers are good at generating. For trying to hunt down the source of errors, especially ones where they just "shit themselves and die" as one of my more colorful redneck customers so eloquently puts it, I use Dependency Walker. It is only a few hundred Kb, no installation, runs off a flash, easy to use, just a great little tool to have. Just point it at an executable and it will list any missing dependencies it may have. You'd be surprised how many weird Windows problems can be traced back to a program having a missing dependency.

I do have one question though: Why on earth are you running AVG with Comodo Firewall? Comodo makes an excellent AV that integrates perfectly with Comodo Firewall, is free, and has a better detection rate and uses less resources than AVG. So why drag your nice PC down with AVG? I have been recommending Comodo AV/Firewall combo for the past two years and even with my most dangerous click happy users I have found Comodo AV stops bugs dead. I have found it to stop many more infections than AVG ever did, and with less CPU and RAM suckage to boot. So why both?

Oh specific hardware.. good god lol

Lets see..

ATI Radion X4870 1GB GDDR5 HIS Ice Q

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161292&cm_re=Radion_4870-_-14-161-292-_-Product

Creative Audigy X Fi Fatality edition

Antec Power Supply

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371026&cm_re=Antec_power_supply-_-17-371-026-_-Product

8GB's of DDR2 800 from OCZ (supposedly will go to 1024 but meh not needed lol)

Asus P5K EPU mobo.

Intel E8400 (not OCed)

I try to stick to top of the line hardware. When possible. By top of the line I mean quality not necessarily the newest stuff (its so much cheaper to shop a gen back on most parts)

Software end I tend to run the latest drivers and patches for everything I can get my hands on.

Windows 7 64 bit ultimate edition (loving the hell out of it)

AVG, Comodo firewall. Pretty much thats it I like to keep things lean, well I do have an iPod so all the cruft that entails is also running...

Not having any issues right now I managed to get the driver installed I just had to do it the old fashioned way :) and I am sure the next round of drivers will fix this (it did the last time ATI had a driver that had the same bug. Not a show stopper just an annoyance and it was years ago the last time this same thing happened lol)

I don't think the issue I had was a common one to be honest. This was a clean install of Windows 7 too so its not like I could blame it on being upgraded from Windows Vista or something. I am really at a failure to explain why the drivers would not install, maybe the moon was out of alignment with mercury or something lol :)

Oh specific hardware.. good god lol

Lets see..

ATI Radion X4870 1GB GDDR5 HIS Ice Q

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161292&cm_re=Radion_4870-_-14-161-292-_-Product

Creative Audigy X Fi Fatality edition

Antec Power Supply

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371026&cm_re=Antec_power_supply-_-17-371-026-_-Product

8GB's of DDR2 800 from OCZ (supposedly will go to 1024 but meh not needed lol)

Asus P5K EPU mobo.

Intel E8400 (not OCed)

I try to stick to top of the line hardware. When possible. By top of the line I mean quality not necessarily the newest stuff (its so much cheaper to shop a gen back on most parts)

Software end I tend to run the latest drivers and patches for everything I can get my hands on.

Windows 7 64 bit ultimate edition (loving the hell out of it)

AVG, Comodo firewall. Pretty much thats it I like to keep things lean, well I do have an iPod so all the cruft that entails is also running...

Not having any issues right now I managed to get the driver installed I just had to do it the old fashioned way :) and I am sure the next round of drivers will fix this (it did the last time ATI had a driver that had the same bug. Not a show stopper just an annoyance and it was years ago the last time this same thing happened lol)

I don't think the issue I had was a common one to be honest. This was a clean install of Windows 7 too so its not like I could blame it on being upgraded from Windows Vista or something. I am really at a failure to explain why the drivers would not install, maybe the moon was out of alignment with mercury or something lol :)

What exactly is wrong with ATI drivers? Exactly? Because I was actually worried when I bought my first ATI a few years back because of all the horror stories I had heard, but frankly I ain't had a bit of trouble out of ANY of my AMD/ATI gear.

I started with an ATI X1950 IIRC, because my 6200 was getting long in the tooth and Nvidia wanted crazy money for anything AGP (BTW you can still get decent AGP cards from ATI) and when I installed it (after using Drivercleaner of course) behold! It all just worked. And it is still working as a matter of fact, with my youngest boy using it with a 3.06Ghz Celeron to play Lunia, Aruarose, Perfect World, and a few other MMORPGs.

When I passed it and the 3.6Ghz P4 on down to the boys I decided to take the plunge and support competition and go all AMD. First I gamed for nearly 3 months on the IGP! of my 780v board (it played Bioshock! It didn't suck!) and then upgraded my dual to a quad core and my GPU to a 4650HD. To even push my luck I got an ATI USB TV Tuner off of Woot! so I could watch cable on my monitor. To my complete surprise, even the TV Tuner, which anyone who has ever had one can tell you can be seriously flaky driver wise, just worked beautifully. i have pushed my luck by upgrading the drivers a couple of times, even changed OSes from XP X64 to Windows 7 HP x64, and it all "just works" day in and day out, nary a glitch or skip, and it all runs cool & quiet without a bit of troubles.

So what exactly is wrong with ATI drivers? Because surely with 3 different boxes, running 3 different OSes (XP32, XP64, 7 HP x64) I would have run into something, wouldn't I? Surely I just can't be the luckiest ATI customer on the planet? And since the "bang for the buck" is squarely in the AMD/ATI camp I have been selling a lot of lower end AMD duals and quads on ATI boards and have yet to have a customer complaint there either. So what am I missing?

Sorry, which part of:

Of course the PS3 offers a lot more

did you find difficult to understand?

In December, a PS3 cost about $350, while Walmart would sell you a Blu-Ray player for $55. So, exactly as I said - "if you just want to watch Blu-Rays on your HDTV, over-buying is an expensive way to go about it." (I've added some emphasis for you this time).

But it's not $350 vs $50! That's like trying to compare Apple to Caviar.

a ps3 slim is $250
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=210189764&listingid=64256146

a DLNA Blu Ray player is $175
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882005044&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Blu-Ray+Players-_-LG+ELECTRONICS-_-82005044

So it's more of a $50-75 premium, not $300 like you state. I personally think the extra features are worth $50. I'm not sure It's worth a $100 premium.

Or you could just slap in a $60 card and get DVI and full hardware accelerated decoding. And computers are REALLY cheap for off lease now. As you can see here they have models starting at $39.

For a nice pretty black one that would make a good HTPC you could get this which at 3Ghz is more than plenty for 1080p. I have sold a few of these to customers and they are compact, quiet, easy to work on, and built like tanks. Just add a capture card and mediaportal and you will have a nice HTPC.

So if somebody wants to buy a Ps3 for playing games and have BD as a bonus, cool. But buying one just for a media center does seem like extreme overkill to me.

There are only 2 as of now that can do true 120hz...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824116402&cm_re=120hz-_-24-116-402-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824001311&cm_re=Samsung_2233RZ-_-24-001-311-_-Product

There are only 2 as of now that can do true 120hz...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824116402&cm_re=120hz-_-24-116-402-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824001311&cm_re=Samsung_2233RZ-_-24-001-311-_-Product

And you can actually game on the ATI IGP! I know, its a shock after dealing with Intel crapola GPUs, but I played games like FEAR and Bioshock for nearly 3 months on my 780v (which is a 3xxx series IIRC) before getting around to picking up a 4650HD. The gameplay was smooth, and what was extra nice is all the major codecs were hardware accelerated out of the box.

For the CPU I picked up the 925 and frankly it is scary how well that baby runs for just $140. Even after gaming for hours it rarely gets above 114f on stock cooler, averaging 108f under load and 82f idle. With 8Mb of total cache this things really flys and at 95w it isn't sucking down the juice either.

Of course if you want to go really cheap they have the Athlon X4 for $99! Now the only difference I can tell is the Athlon has the L3 cache disabled (which i have heard if you get the right Gigabyte board you can often re-enable cache and/or cores from BIOS) but you are still talking a 2.6Ghz quad for under $100. I have built a few of these for customers and they just rave how fast it is.

But if you are thinking of building a new PC the bang for the buck with AMD now is just insane. All told IIRC after rebates I paid less than $700 for my quad core with 8Gb of RAM, a 4650 1Gb, dual 500Gb HDDs, and Windows 7 HP X64. I am used to having to build myself a new machine every three years or so, but honestly this thing is so fast I just don't see it happening for quite awhile. Hell the board will take up to 32Gb of RAM! You really can't beat the bang for the buck at AMD and the last thing we need is Intel to end up with a monopoly again like they had in the old days. And with the socket AM3 being AM2+ backward compatible you can keep a board for quite a long time with only a BIOS update to support the new chips. As a former Intel guy I highly recommend the new AMD chips. They are some truly scary tech for truly cheap money.

And you can actually game on the ATI IGP! I know, its a shock after dealing with Intel crapola GPUs, but I played games like FEAR and Bioshock for nearly 3 months on my 780v (which is a 3xxx series IIRC) before getting around to picking up a 4650HD. The gameplay was smooth, and what was extra nice is all the major codecs were hardware accelerated out of the box.

For the CPU I picked up the 925 and frankly it is scary how well that baby runs for just $140. Even after gaming for hours it rarely gets above 114f on stock cooler, averaging 108f under load and 82f idle. With 8Mb of total cache this things really flys and at 95w it isn't sucking down the juice either.

Of course if you want to go really cheap they have the Athlon X4 for $99! Now the only difference I can tell is the Athlon has the L3 cache disabled (which i have heard if you get the right Gigabyte board you can often re-enable cache and/or cores from BIOS) but you are still talking a 2.6Ghz quad for under $100. I have built a few of these for customers and they just rave how fast it is.

But if you are thinking of building a new PC the bang for the buck with AMD now is just insane. All told IIRC after rebates I paid less than $700 for my quad core with 8Gb of RAM, a 4650 1Gb, dual 500Gb HDDs, and Windows 7 HP X64. I am used to having to build myself a new machine every three years or so, but honestly this thing is so fast I just don't see it happening for quite awhile. Hell the board will take up to 32Gb of RAM! You really can't beat the bang for the buck at AMD and the last thing we need is Intel to end up with a monopoly again like they had in the old days. And with the socket AM3 being AM2+ backward compatible you can keep a board for quite a long time with only a BIOS update to support the new chips. As a former Intel guy I highly recommend the new AMD chips. They are some truly scary tech for truly cheap money.

What I'd really like is to have a passively cooled box that's able to play 1080p H.264.

This may be what you're looking for:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103228&Tpk=aspire%20revo

Lifehacker & others have instructions to put XBMC on it using VDPAU, seems really nice.

You do know that you can buy Core i7 laptops for relatively reasonable prices, right?