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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813185103&ATT=13-185-103
* PC CHIPS M789CG(3.0A) VIA C3 Samual 2 2000+(800MHz/133) VIA CLE266 Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo
* $44.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135057

$9 more, NVidia graphics processor, Athlon 3200+, same 0-MB of RAM...

You'll need a heat sink. Avoid installing >1 DIMM. Does that qualify as 'close'?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2013240636+1421430848&name=64GB

And bigger, 128GB:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2013240636+1421430849&name=128GB

Yes, the prices are exorbitant. Just wait, patience is a virtue. At least we can actually see and purchase the current status of SSD, and at the rate they are increasing it will phase out hard disks in both capacity and price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2013240636+1421430848&name=64GB

And bigger, 128GB:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2013240636+1421430849&name=128GB

Yes, the prices are exorbitant. Just wait, patience is a virtue. At least we can actually see and purchase the current status of SSD, and at the rate they are increasing it will phase out hard disks in both capacity and price.

First, you really can't buy a board for much less than the $80 and expect it to work well. They all come with tons of features these days - you just have to decide which you want. Going cheaper nowadays doesn't mean same quality with less features - it means similar features with lower quality.

Second, there's some very good reasons for going with a board that includes onboard video. It gives you the potential to run more than two monitors (which is, I admit, very unlikely) but more important, if/when your main graphics card bites the dirt, you've got your onboard to fall back on while you wait for your replacement to arrive. That means that while you'll go a week without playing Crysis and UT3 at max settings, you'll still be able to do pretty much everything else.

That said, my take on the article is that they spent way too much on the graphics. You can stretch that $500 quite a bit further by going with a much cheaper card that'll still run the newest games just fine at reduced settings. I'd say this would get the job done, and still give you some space in your budget to upgrade your hard drive and something else, which could be pretty important in that P4/Athlon XP system from 3 years ago.

I think what makes this marginally newsworthy is the price tag. Until I recently upgraded my 3-year-old box with a $42 Radeon 9600 and more RAM (upgraded to 1 gig for $50), I would have thought that most modern games were hopelessly out of my PC's league. However, I recently purchased the Orange Box, and I've been enjoying Portal, HF2, and TF2 with more than acceptable video quality. I had a decent rig to start with (P4 3.0Ghz), and my current set-up is far inferior to the one described. It's nice to be reminded that for what could be construed as a reasonable amount of money you can enjoy modern PC games with better-than-console graphics.

There's a huge difference between $500 and $3,000. I would have put the "budget box" tag closer to $1000. $500, within console range, is friendlier.

Of course, decent power supplies, cases, and HDs can nickel and dime you to death, and one of the reasons I didn't go with a more powerful GPU was my relatively low-power PSU, so YMMV when it comes to the economics of this upgrade.

From Forbes:

Last month Asus' Eee PCs hit store shelves in Taiwan, and Shih may have his breakthrough. The two-pound laptops starting at $340 sold out in 30 minutes, and buyers around the globe clamored to get their hands on them. This month they arrive in the U.S.--starting at $300--and Europe. The rollout will probably reach China early next year, with the schedule for the rest of Asia not yet set. The day they went on sale, Asustek's stock rose 4.9%. Kirk Yang, who heads Asia technology hardware research for Citigroup in Hong Kong, predicts that the company will sell at least 3 million Eee PCs next year but could easily tally 6 million. By comparison, Apple has sold 4.3 million laptops in the last four quarters. Analysts say the Eee PC will probably have the low-end market to itself for 18 months before the other big PC makers can jump in.

The Forbes article is slightly off in regards to the US price (it is actually $399.99 in the US), but there's some pretty obvious demand. At first glance the eee PC seems like a small underpowered laptop. However, the hardware is plenty to do the most common PC functions like reading emails, browsing the internet, and watching videos.

I do not think the PC market is going to diminish, but that it will change. There will be more ultra-portable devices like the eee or iphone to replace common functions of a PC. In the near future I see the desktop PC as a tool for demanding applications, but not for general home use. For example, my parents (we live in California) love it when their computer gets smaller because they only use it to write documents, check email, and browse the internet. There's no longer a need for a PC to take up as much space as it has in the past.

Now is a great time to build an HTPC for watching high definition movies. LG just released their dual-format hddvd/blu-ray reader drive for under $300, and nvidia/ati have low-cost HDCP enabled video cards which can offload the decoding work from the CPU. This allows you to make a cheap dual format HDM player which is essentially future proof to future changes in the various standards.

Now is a great time to build an HTPC for watching high definition movies. LG just released their dual-format hddvd/blu-ray reader drive for under $300, and nvidia/ati have low-cost HDCP enabled video cards which can offload the decoding work from the CPU. This allows you to make a cheap dual format HDM player which is essentially future proof to future changes in the various standards.

As I'm sure you're already aware, OEM pricing is very different from full retail, plus it's not like he's going to need Office Professional (the one that would cost $460) just to get Powerpoint. Looking at MS's product matrix, he could get away with "Home & Student" and still get Powerpoint - that can be had from Newegg for $129, and includes Word, Office, Powerpoint, and OneNote. Compare to StarOffice, which is $70 - yes, you get most of the same functionality, but it's still not quite the same; the point, however, is that this is less than a third of the price you quoted.

Windows licensing, meanwhile, is not $210 for OEM licensing. A NewEgg search reveals that you can get OEM licensing in packs of three for roughly $410; that works out to under $140 per license. Obviously, mass-manufacturers of PCs get much more favorable licensing pricing than that, but, for the sake of argument, we'll say that the customer is paying $140. This is still $70 less than the number you pulled out.

So, at this point, we've spent no more than $270 in software. Is this $270 you don't have to spend if you get the WalMart Linux PC? Of course, but if the WalMart Linux PC doesn't fit your needs, $270 is a reasonable number, and certainly much more reasonable than the hyperbole-screaming $2500 you came up with on a whim.

DISCLAIMER: I run Ubuntu Linux on everything I have because it meets my needs and does so at a price point that I am quite content with (free!). I do think that, as far as Linux distros go, it's easily the most user-friendly one that I've ever run across, and would happily recommend it to anyone that has some basic technical acumen. That said, I do not run Ubuntu because of it's philosophy, nor do I do it because of any particular dislike of Microsoft's "monopoly practices". From where I'm sitting, Microsoft did precisely what Ubuntu is doing now - they offered a lower priced (compared to the competition of the time), mostly fully featured set of applications that met the needs of a vast majority of people. Think back to the late '80s - if you wanted a GUI, the only way it was going to happen was if you bought new hardware that was incompatible with your existing IBM hardware or if you paid through the nose for OS/2... until Windows 3.0 came out. Need a server operating system? No problem - your choices were Unix (required expensive hardware, had severe vendor lock-in at the time, licensing was atrociously expensive), Netware (a little better on all counts, but still pricey), or Windows NT (same interface as all your workstations and a little cheaper). If you're a 10 person operation, guess which one you're picking? Hey, it's 1994 and you need a small database. Microsoft Access costs $100. How much does everything else cost? Oh... I see. Access it is! How about an Internet browser? Remember when those weren't free-as-in-beer? How did they get free? That's right - Internet Explorer. Were any of those products perfect? Heck no. All of their products were functionally inferior to the competition - but they met the needs of 99% of the world and cost less than their competition. Sound familiar? What people seem to forget in their haste to hate Microsoft is that, for better or worse, they were better behaved than their competition of the time. Now, their time is passing, and look who's sneaking up on them...

As I'm sure you're already aware, OEM pricing is very different from full retail, plus it's not like he's going to need Office Professional (the one that would cost $460) just to get Powerpoint. Looking at MS's product matrix, he could get away with "Home & Student" and still get Powerpoint - that can be had from Newegg for $129, and includes Word, Office, Powerpoint, and OneNote. Compare to StarOffice, which is $70 - yes, you get most of the same functionality, but it's still not quite the same; the point, however, is that this is less than a third of the price you quoted.

Windows licensing, meanwhile, is not $210 for OEM licensing. A NewEgg search reveals that you can get OEM licensing in packs of three for roughly $410; that works out to under $140 per license. Obviously, mass-manufacturers of PCs get much more favorable licensing pricing than that, but, for the sake of argument, we'll say that the customer is paying $140. This is still $70 less than the number you pulled out.

So, at this point, we've spent no more than $270 in software. Is this $270 you don't have to spend if you get the WalMart Linux PC? Of course, but if the WalMart Linux PC doesn't fit your needs, $270 is a reasonable number, and certainly much more reasonable than the hyperbole-screaming $2500 you came up with on a whim.

DISCLAIMER: I run Ubuntu Linux on everything I have because it meets my needs and does so at a price point that I am quite content with (free!). I do think that, as far as Linux distros go, it's easily the most user-friendly one that I've ever run across, and would happily recommend it to anyone that has some basic technical acumen. That said, I do not run Ubuntu because of it's philosophy, nor do I do it because of any particular dislike of Microsoft's "monopoly practices". From where I'm sitting, Microsoft did precisely what Ubuntu is doing now - they offered a lower priced (compared to the competition of the time), mostly fully featured set of applications that met the needs of a vast majority of people. Think back to the late '80s - if you wanted a GUI, the only way it was going to happen was if you bought new hardware that was incompatible with your existing IBM hardware or if you paid through the nose for OS/2... until Windows 3.0 came out. Need a server operating system? No problem - your choices were Unix (required expensive hardware, had severe vendor lock-in at the time, licensing was atrociously expensive), Netware (a little better on all counts, but still pricey), or Windows NT (same interface as all your workstations and a little cheaper). If you're a 10 person operation, guess which one you're picking? Hey, it's 1994 and you need a small database. Microsoft Access costs $100. How much does everything else cost? Oh... I see. Access it is! How about an Internet browser? Remember when those weren't free-as-in-beer? How did they get free? That's right - Internet Explorer. Were any of those products perfect? Heck no. All of their products were functionally inferior to the competition - but they met the needs of 99% of the world and cost less than their competition. Sound familiar? What people seem to forget in their haste to hate Microsoft is that, for better or worse, they were better behaved than their competition of the time. Now, their time is passing, and look who's sneaking up on them...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220244

It is a big deal because usually cheap laptops (win or linux) are big, bulky and VERY heavy. Here we have a cheap and at the same time ultralight laptop

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883114030
Here is one of your cheapest alternatives on the market

Brand eMachines
Model W3609
Recommended Usage Home / Home Office
Processor Intel Celeron D 356(3.33GHz)
Processor Main Features 64 bit Processor
Cache Per Processor 512KB L2 Cache
Memory 512MB DDR2 533
Hard Drive 120GB SATA 7200rpm
Optical Drive 1 DVD±RW 16x Multiformat Dual-Layer Optical Drive
Graphics Intel GMA 950 Up to 224MB Shared Video Memory
Audio 6-channel (5.1) high-definition audio
Ethernet Intel 10/100Mbps Ethernet LAN
Speaker Amplified Stereo Speakers (USB-Powered)
Keyboard Standard multifunction keyboard
Mouse 2-button wheel mouse
Operating System Windows Vista Home Basic

500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s [Add $395]

4GB (4 x 1GB) [Add $839]

You want to impress me? Show me a $50-100 video card that can perform as well as a $200. $50 falls into something I call 'cheap'.

HEY, guess what buddy? Those ~$50 video cards on the market RIGHT NOW completely toast $400+ 9800 Pro and 9800 XT cards from four years ago, and the ~$100 cards completely toast the $400+ 6800/x800 generation released three years ago. For incredibly cheap, you can purchase an impressive amount of power, because it all trickles down.

For example, we have your basic x1650 Pro card here for $60. This card model was originally called the x1600 XT, and it started out with an MSRP of $250, but competition and chip revisions have brought the price down to JUST 60 BUCKS! Sure, it won't play Crysis on SuperUltraMegaHigh (TM) settings, but it will play modern games on low settings, and play older games with all the candy you want.

Why do you care about the release of the 8800 GT? Because it is an example of this trickle-down in action - the amount of graphics horsepower you get in this $250 package used to cost over $400 a year ago. This means that the midrange cards priced below this beast will drop in price like crazy, just like that x1650 Pro card I linked.

I recently bought a SATA hard drive from Best Buy. It was shrink-wrapped and everything, but I got home and inside was a nice old, used, IDE drive. I took it back and they let me exchange it, fortunately. They really need to do better about checking their returns... I'd go somewhere else, but the town where I live doesn't have a lot of alternatives.

NEWegg.com
newEGG.com
newegg.COM

If UPS or Fedex deliver to your town, you can shop newegg. I don't understand all of the "I got ripped-off at Best Buy when I bought a SATA drive but it turned out to be IDE" stories on /. today. I have purchased a metric crapload of computer parts (cases, motherboards, memory, video cards, monitors, etc.) as well as few digital cameras from newegg. I have never had a problem with the stuff that shipped from newegg's warehouses.

http://www.newegg.com/

I got the 8800GTS 640 in January for $379 shipped. This article claims it is still $400?

I think not:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Description=8800GTS&x=0&y=0

"What would you say to a video card that performs like a $400 GeForce 8800 GTS for $200-250? Say hello to the GeForce 8800 GT.

I'd say, according to Newegg, a "$400" 8800GTS can be had for as cheap as $319 (after rebate), and the "$200" 8800GT is selling for $269 or more.

"What would you say to a video card that performs like a $400 GeForce 8800 GTS for $200-250? Say hello to the GeForce 8800 GT.

I'd say, according to Newegg, a "$400" 8800GTS can be had for as cheap as $319 (after rebate), and the "$200" 8800GT is selling for $269 or more.

We're talking about high end cards here, not your run of the mill card for non-gamers. $200-300 is relatively cheap compared to the $550-800 price of the 8800 Ultra. Also, this is brand new tech, prices are always higher for early adopters. Expect this card to be worth $100 in a year or two.

Here are the main benefits I see with this card:

1. Single slot cooler instead of a dual slot like all the other high end cards made over the last 2 years
2. One 6 pin power connection instead of two like all the other high end G80 cards
3. Power consumption. According to the article (yes I read it), Nvidia rates the power consumption of the 8800GT at 110 watts.
4. Supports PCI Express 2.0 (backwards compatible with PCI Express 1.1)
5. Relatively cheap. I always found $200-300 to be the best price range for a video card (the high end G80 cards on the other hand cost $500-800)

Actually, the 8800 cards are just for playing games. Really. video/graphics/animation pros get something like this or a FireGL.

Actually, the 8800 cards are just for playing games. Really. video/graphics/animation pros get something like this or a FireGL.

http://www.newegg.com/

I don't know where you shop but 500 GB hard drives are $100-$110. Anyway, disk storage isn't the (only) problem. Those bits have to be written and read to/from the hard drive (slow performance), stored in memory, sent over the network, sent over the Internet, sent to USB drives, stored on backups, etc. Unneeded / excessive bloat is never a good thing. Attitudes like yours are why computers that are 50 times "faster" than they were 10 years ago perform the same or slower. Have you used Vista?

Let's just hope that this wireless solution is cheaper than the ridiculous pricing of the HDMI cable out there, because the only purpose of this solution is to replace the HDMI cable.

Stop buying from Best Buy and start buying from Newegg. You'll see a bit of a difference.

24K gold-plated connectors enhance conductivity, resist corrosion and provide high-quality signal transfer

It's digital. The signal gets through, or it does not.

BTW, a few weeks ago, I read an article about some MoBo manufacturers considering adding 512MB-2GB of flash memory to boot an embedded Linux desktop from the BIOS for disk-less web-browsing and other stuff...

Considering? Done! In stock!

a BIOS with embedded Linux does not seem that far-fetched, we only need 1GB firmware hubs to plug into Intel's chipsets and hope we will not need to flash our 1GB BIOS too often.

People have been replacing the traditional BIOS with Linux for about eight years now, so yeah, I would say it's feasible. :) Would make more sense to just embed a flash drive for the userspace filesystem and just put the bootstrap and kernel in the firmware proper.

I *am* willing to buy a new USB network adapter that works correctly in a default install of Ubuntu without any editing of config files or ndiswrap'in - but I've yet to have anyone point me to a USB network adapter that fits that criteria.

I *am* willing to buy a new USB network adapter that works correctly in a default install of Ubuntu without any editing of config files or ndiswrap'in - but I've yet to have anyone point me to a USB network adapter that fits that criteria.

The issue isn't ubuntu or linux per se but if the manufacturer supports linux or not. If they don't there's not much that can be done. Some people try to rewrite the drivers or wrap the windows drivers to run on Linux etc
Otoh isn't it more simple to just support (vote w/ur wallet) the companies that are linux friendly? There are lots of wireless cards that support linux.
I setup an edubuntu box recently and instead of trying to figure out how to get something to work, I simply looked up what is known to work and picked it up (from newegg and it has been working flawlessly.

back up on to *what*!? my home dir is about 60 gigs! maybe i'll rename it to be safe, then it won't have any excuse to wipe it. i can copy all the files later and chown them

back up on to *what*!? my home dir is about 60 gigs! maybe i'll rename it to be safe, then it won't have any excuse to wipe it. i can copy all the files later and chown them

I have digital cable and getting that working is a big thing for me.

Yes I did look at the manufacturer sites (obviously with the exception of the Zune site, I just assumed incorrectly).

I looked at the Sandisk site here:
http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Item(2057)-SDMX4-8192-A70-Sansa_e280_MP3_Player_8GB.aspx
Doesn't list formats (at least not where I can see) so I just checked newegg (specifications tab):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16855125013
The specs tab lists "Supported Audio Formats MP3/WMA/WMA with DRM"
no mention of mp4/AAC.

And Creative Zen W:
http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=214&product=15752&nav=1&bypass=1
Audio Playback Formats: MP3, WMA, WAV
no mention of mp4/AAC.

So I checked a couple other players -
Zen Vision M won't or doesn't list it: http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=214&product=14331&nav=1&bypass=1
Zen Stone plus won't or doesn't list it: http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=214&product=16696&nav=1&bypass=1
The regular Zen does
So at least one player from their current offering supports it but many of their players don't seem to unless I'm missing something.

Still the one consistency is that they all support MP3.

I do find it interesting that the Zune supports AAC, filed under "learn something new every day". Thanks for the link.

• Buy a copy of XP (and tell the company you bought your laptop from you disagreed to the EULA - you can get a refund)
• Use an alternative OS (whether it be Linux or OSX or whatever)
• Buy a laptop that has XP preinstalled (yes, companies still sell them)

I've just been working on pricing out a Mac Pro...getting minimal stuff from Apple, and maxing out the ram, harddrives, video card and all from places like New Egg. For a box with 16G ram, 4x 740GB drives, dual quad, raid card, NVIdia Quadra fx 4500 and apple care...was about $7200 before shipping...will ship to a NH address and have my friend reship to me and get educational discount.

That's not too bad for such a loaded monster of a machine. I also found a great monitor I'd like to get here.

Could you build the whole thing like that for much less than that? Matching virtually spec for spec with the mac pro, starting out and adding on as I did?

What "360 game"?

How about looking at a better, yet cheaper CPU?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115028

The E6850 is $700 less than the X6800. It has a new stepping (G0), and I don't think the unlocked multiplier of the X6800 is worth the difference in money.

Huh?
A quick look at newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609245
"Sequential Access - Read 60MB/s (min)
Sequential Access - Write 45MB/s (min)"

That is just barely slower than a 7200 rpm hard disk, and with less than 1 ms access times the SSD will blow away a 7200 rpm drive in real world performance.

Newegg is selling a 128 GB Solid State Drive as a single unit. It's pretty expensive though. (Note: this link may go out of date really fast.)

Newegg is selling a 128 GB Solid State Drive as a single unit. It's pretty expensive though. (Note: this link may go out of date really fast.)

If what you're looking for is a server to run IIS, its really not that expensive.

Not to mention you're looking at at least $2000 for a bottom end, entry level server, its just not that much money.

If you buy it with a server from Dell, its all of ~$250.00. Standard version is a whopping ~$600.

A CF/IDE or CF/SATA adapter with the Linux distro of your choice is easy to setup, easy to upgrade, and easy to just swap out if you have a second CF card. Works in any recent mobo without spending much cash. You can do Poor Man's Installs of Knoppix or other live CD.

Damn Small Linux can be installed to CF in a USB cardholder using the install to USB option and then all ya do is toss the card into the the IDE header adapter.(Worked nicely on my PII266 Portege) SATA adapters are available.

Example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822998002

BTW, use a Sandisk or other CF card that conforms to IDE spec if you want it detected properly. many CF cards won't be detected properly and fail to boot.

Grab ideinfo.exe from
http://pigtail.net/LRP/hd/index.html
(you can extract it from the linked floppy image and build it into a bootable DOS or FREEDOS CD since floppies are rare now) and use that to check out your CF card parameters if you have problems.

And lets be honest, sales from services like Steam and Direct2Drive are rather insignificant compared to that coming from brick and mortar stores, that is if they ever actually released those numbers.

Not to mention recently you have such time vacuums like World of Warcraft that have been drying up PC gaming dollars that might go elsewhere. Consoles don't really have that problem, yet.

Easiest method I've come up with so far for the average user and it only cost $200. It is not the most reliable but it is apparently vastly superior to what 99% of users are doing which is nothing. Buy two usb hard drives like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822154150 . Keep one at a friends/neighbors house. Once a month on the same day you write your mortgage or rent check do the back immediately afterwards. Then drop the drive off at your friend's/neighbor's. Repeat forever. Honestly if you don't tie it to something important you just won't do it.