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Newegg, XFX 6800 XTreme.

Yeah, you have half the normal pipelines of a regular 6800, but you did say "bang for the buck" and at right around $100 for dual digital out + 256MB PCIE, I think this qualifies. Yes, you CAN put these in SLI.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustRatingReview.asp ?DEPA=0&Type=&Item=N82E16814150130&Pagesize=100

-theGreater.

wire may have latency advantages, but they also have this nifty 'wireless' technology available... so one can take one's keyboard and mouse a few meteres farther than cable can be extended.

That being said, the 'insulating foam' seems like it has less to do with the silence than with the ultra silent, ultra efficient heatsink like the zalman one they used (they also mave an aftermarket VGA cooler model, that's just as silent)

yeah the CPU and VGA cooler each putting out around 20 dbs of noise ;) and then claiming it's some 'special foam' that's making it virtually silent? 20 Dbs isn't that silent either, i usually run my TV set at 20 DBs. although i suppose this is where the 'special foam' comes into play.

In any case, this system is hardly a 'silent' PC, when one can get a pretty simple to install WC kit, that with a 'fully submersible pump' will emit about 2 dbs of noise.

hrm. ~20 dbs or 2 dbs not to mention that one can build a full mineral oil bath rig that uses the same zalman cooler sans fan, for a 0 dbs 'full immersion liquid cooled' rig.

'silent' gaming rig? i've heard quieter ones. sure they all weighed a LOT more than this one. but if ones wants a TRULY silent gaming rig that's the obvious performance trade off.

Corporate Edition hahahaha if you want an OEM newegg is pretty good.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16837102062
and I don't think that you have to buy another piece of hardware.

I don't really care for the Mac OS, so could I just have a minimac running windows XP and that it.

All I can say is I'll stick with just grabbing a standard IDE drive and an IDE->USB2 case for it. Good grief though, on newegg, you can grab a drive that does all this does at about $160+S&H for a 160GB. I may not speak for everyone here, but, I say I'd pay $10 and give up not having to have an extra power plug for the extra storage. ( Here's the particular product that caught my eye: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822154068 )

I don't like the idea of relying on an iPod or similar product for storage though. They aren't really designed for it. Really they are meant to toss in all your music files and I guess now video files, not to use for routine backups or large transfers across systems, or other similar things. Personally, I rather prefer the idea of those cheap little pocket-sized USB mini drives. I think they've reached as much as 6GB total these days, but, the reasonably priced ones are 2GB, which is still 1GB or so more that I would ordinarily need to move between systems where a network cable wouldn't do and I don't want to write a DVDR. Heck, flash drives are up to 4GB and maybe beyond, albiet a lot slower (then again, more reliable.)

Looks like a flop product to me. That price will surely kill them. Plus most people who'd actually use a thing like this will gravitate more towards either better portability smaller sizes or less portability with external plug and all holding a lot more space for the cost.

A power adapter? You've got to be kidding - Most external 2.5" HD enclosures can be powered by the USB bus itself. Plus, you are paying some company to take a drive, put it in a case, and slap their name on it. Why does this unit have Firewire 800 anyway? FW400 is faster than any laptop drive can go...And, besides, is Firewire REALLY necessary when just about every computer under the sun has USB 2.0 now? Besides, USB2.0 can also sustain transfer rates greater than most single hard drives can dish out. So why not roll your own enclosure?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16817145329
$18.99

Or if you really, really want firewire:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16817146035

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822148073
How about a 160GB for $329

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822146047
Or a 7200RPM 80GB for $145?

So ask yourself - Is a clear case and a Firewire 800 interface really worth the extra $100?

A power adapter? You've got to be kidding - Most external 2.5" HD enclosures can be powered by the USB bus itself. Plus, you are paying some company to take a drive, put it in a case, and slap their name on it. Why does this unit have Firewire 800 anyway? FW400 is faster than any laptop drive can go...And, besides, is Firewire REALLY necessary when just about every computer under the sun has USB 2.0 now? Besides, USB2.0 can also sustain transfer rates greater than most single hard drives can dish out. So why not roll your own enclosure?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16817145329
$18.99

Or if you really, really want firewire:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16817146035

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822148073
How about a 160GB for $329

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822146047
Or a 7200RPM 80GB for $145?

So ask yourself - Is a clear case and a Firewire 800 interface really worth the extra $100?

A power adapter? You've got to be kidding - Most external 2.5" HD enclosures can be powered by the USB bus itself. Plus, you are paying some company to take a drive, put it in a case, and slap their name on it. Why does this unit have Firewire 800 anyway? FW400 is faster than any laptop drive can go...And, besides, is Firewire REALLY necessary when just about every computer under the sun has USB 2.0 now? Besides, USB2.0 can also sustain transfer rates greater than most single hard drives can dish out. So why not roll your own enclosure?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16817145329
$18.99

Or if you really, really want firewire:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16817146035

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822148073
How about a 160GB for $329

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822146047
Or a 7200RPM 80GB for $145?

So ask yourself - Is a clear case and a Firewire 800 interface really worth the extra $100?

A power adapter? You've got to be kidding - Most external 2.5" HD enclosures can be powered by the USB bus itself. Plus, you are paying some company to take a drive, put it in a case, and slap their name on it. Why does this unit have Firewire 800 anyway? FW400 is faster than any laptop drive can go...And, besides, is Firewire REALLY necessary when just about every computer under the sun has USB 2.0 now? Besides, USB2.0 can also sustain transfer rates greater than most single hard drives can dish out. So why not roll your own enclosure?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16817145329
$18.99

Or if you really, really want firewire:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16817146035

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822148073
How about a 160GB for $329

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822146047
Or a 7200RPM 80GB for $145?

So ask yourself - Is a clear case and a Firewire 800 interface really worth the extra $100?

I glanced briefly at TFA and immediately closed it having seen the motherboard they used for this. I have had nothing but heartache using Gigabyte products, and strongly discourage others from using them as well. If you go to Newegg and read some of the reviews, you'll see what I mean. Here's an example: GA-K8N51GMF-9 . They have other boards with similar complaints being posted.

Call me vindictive, but the headache I've gone through struggling with Gigabyte's products and tech support makes me very biased on this topic.

Aw man, it's not that expensive.

The only piece of equipment you can tangibly benefit from is a new video card. A couple of days ago the 7900GT/X came out. Drop the $350 at Newegg and pick one up.

If you want to upgrade something else after that, maybe getting an Athlon 64 4000 or 3800 could help (but not like the video card will).

Have you not seen any price lists in the last few days? The Conroe part as previewed is expected to be at/around $500USD. The FX-60 from AMD is over $1000USD, not that you can't get an Athlon64 X2 4800+ for just over $600USD, prices will surely drop by then but Conroe does look to be a bit faster.

$2500 won't buy you CRAP for serious server storage.

My array is decent. I wouldn't put this array production at a company for maintainability reasons (only I would know how to fix it if it broke) but the technology is sound and with some software work and support it would probably be appropriate for a corperate environment. I can read from the array at about 130 MB/s and write to it at about 100 MB/s locally and, because it's raid 6, it can sustain 2 drive failures without data loss. I'm sure the max I/O's per second will be less than half of what it could be with the same number of faster drives but it's hardly slow. The gigabit network and the network clients are the bottleneck in most cases.

If you want to see the hardware I used, here it is:
https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/wishlist/Publ icWishDetail.asp?WishListNumber=1764600
I use Linux's software raid. It took a little work outside of the normal Fedora setup to make it work the way I wanted it to but other than that it was pretty straightforward.

I spent $5,100 just on drives and only got 720GB of RAID5 15K RPM storage, this doesn't include the server or RAID controller.

There are very expensive drives out there and usually, buying them is a bad idea.

I'm sure those 15K RPM drives have faster transfer rates than the drives I used and can handle many more IOs per second, especially when pushed to high queue depths, but for an email server with the number of users mentioned I'd say 8-16 large 7200 RPM large SATA drives would work just fine. Most people make the mistake of assuming if they want a fast array they need fast drives. If you want an array to give quick responses under the load of a large number of simultanious users, more spindles does a lot more than faster drives.

The added benefit of using a large number of slower drives is huge capacity. This matches up well with storing large ammounts of email since most of the older email will be infrequently accessed.

To support a much larger server you are looking at 10's of thousands.

Generally cost per megabyte increases as the size of your array increases but if you design one well, tens of thousands (implying more than 20k) is spending too much. My array has 1.7TB usable. A more conventional setup involving a name brand server with a hardware raid controler would undoubtedly cost more but I suspect one could be found for far less than $20k.

It might also be interesting to note that the E6700 has a TDP of less than 65 watts, whereas the tested Athlon64 has a TDP of 110 watts. Amazes me that such a thing isn't brought up in the article, it is one of the factors we have decently hard data on and a clear advantage for Intel, whereas the benchmarks themselves leave a lot of room for arguing.

While one can argue a lot about the validity of the benchmarks it is quite clear that Intel is ahead in pretty much every possible metric with the information we have as of yet. It will be interesting to see how things sort themselves out this fall.

Any decent PC + mythTV or LANVLC or any other OSS software would make a great DVR

Something like this perhaps:

http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/Wishlist/WishS hareShow.asp?ID=1921721

I'm working, as much as possible, with the same rules they did, except that I'm pricing everything after rebates.

RAM: Corsair 1GB PC3200, $48.99 after rebate http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3746086

Optical Drive: NEC 3550A, same as they did, $38.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Subm it=ENE&N=50001326&Manufactory=1326

Keyboard, Mouse and Speakers: About as generic as they come, cheap PS2 keyboard, USB mouse, and some sort of speakers, $12.99 including shipping http://www.chiefvalue.com/app/productdetails.asp?l inkid=119&item=23-174-003

Monitor: 17" X2Gen LCD, $129.99 http://www.onsale.com/onsale/shop/detail~dpno~7181 70.asp

Case/PSU: Generic silver case with a generic 450W PSU. $29.50, free shipping http://www.supergooddeal.com/ProductDetails.asp?Pr oductCode=BCC204-4HA-S-P4&Click=17583

Hard Drive: There's either a 160 GB WD drive for $50 http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/productDetail.do?oi d=67646&cm_keycode=85 or a 100 GB Maxtor for $40 http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?p roduct_code=320167&pfp=feb19sale.

Now, here I left a choice, and a bit of a nasty one. I've got $189.54 left for a motherboard, CPU, and hopefully a video card. I'm going to offer it both ways, one with the best processor I can fit into this, the other with a cheaper processor and a real video card.

Motherboard: Again, there aren't any great motherboard/CPU combo deals at the moment. For those wanting to go all-out on the CPU, I found an Athlon64 3400+ (socket 754, obviously) with a PCCHIPS 861-G (Yeah, crap, but it has onboard audio and video) motherboard for $184 (optioning to update the BIOS and including thermal paste). http://www.pc-infinity.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen =PROD&Store_Code=P&Product_Code=MB7543400

Now, if you do plan on doing a bit of gaming on this, a video card might be a good idea. Unfortunately, one really can't be put in without dropping the processor to a Sempron, so that's what I'll do. Let's face it though, with the video card that could still be afforded, CPU limiting will probably be a non-issue. As far as Semprons go, the 2800+ they chose seemed to be at a very nice price point, so I went with it and an ECS 761GX motherboard, $75 and $49.50 respectively at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16819104245 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813135002

Now there's $65 left for a video card, but I'm going to offer four options; two each for ATI and NVidia, going to $525 as they did or keeping it under $500 (with the strong recommendation of spending the extra $25; performance increases a lot). For the cheaper two, we have a choice between the ATI X1300 128MB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8

I'm working, as much as possible, with the same rules they did, except that I'm pricing everything after rebates.

RAM: Corsair 1GB PC3200, $48.99 after rebate http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3746086

Optical Drive: NEC 3550A, same as they did, $38.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Subm it=ENE&N=50001326&Manufactory=1326

Keyboard, Mouse and Speakers: About as generic as they come, cheap PS2 keyboard, USB mouse, and some sort of speakers, $12.99 including shipping http://www.chiefvalue.com/app/productdetails.asp?l inkid=119&item=23-174-003

Monitor: 17" X2Gen LCD, $129.99 http://www.onsale.com/onsale/shop/detail~dpno~7181 70.asp

Case/PSU: Generic silver case with a generic 450W PSU. $29.50, free shipping http://www.supergooddeal.com/ProductDetails.asp?Pr oductCode=BCC204-4HA-S-P4&Click=17583

Hard Drive: There's either a 160 GB WD drive for $50 http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/productDetail.do?oi d=67646&cm_keycode=85 or a 100 GB Maxtor for $40 http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?p roduct_code=320167&pfp=feb19sale.

Now, here I left a choice, and a bit of a nasty one. I've got $189.54 left for a motherboard, CPU, and hopefully a video card. I'm going to offer it both ways, one with the best processor I can fit into this, the other with a cheaper processor and a real video card.

Motherboard: Again, there aren't any great motherboard/CPU combo deals at the moment. For those wanting to go all-out on the CPU, I found an Athlon64 3400+ (socket 754, obviously) with a PCCHIPS 861-G (Yeah, crap, but it has onboard audio and video) motherboard for $184 (optioning to update the BIOS and including thermal paste). http://www.pc-infinity.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen =PROD&Store_Code=P&Product_Code=MB7543400

Now, if you do plan on doing a bit of gaming on this, a video card might be a good idea. Unfortunately, one really can't be put in without dropping the processor to a Sempron, so that's what I'll do. Let's face it though, with the video card that could still be afforded, CPU limiting will probably be a non-issue. As far as Semprons go, the 2800+ they chose seemed to be at a very nice price point, so I went with it and an ECS 761GX motherboard, $75 and $49.50 respectively at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16819104245 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813135002

Now there's $65 left for a video card, but I'm going to offer four options; two each for ATI and NVidia, going to $525 as they did or keeping it under $500 (with the strong recommendation of spending the extra $25; performance increases a lot). For the cheaper two, we have a choice between the ATI X1300 128MB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8

I'm working, as much as possible, with the same rules they did, except that I'm pricing everything after rebates.

RAM: Corsair 1GB PC3200, $48.99 after rebate http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3746086

Optical Drive: NEC 3550A, same as they did, $38.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Subm it=ENE&N=50001326&Manufactory=1326

Keyboard, Mouse and Speakers: About as generic as they come, cheap PS2 keyboard, USB mouse, and some sort of speakers, $12.99 including shipping http://www.chiefvalue.com/app/productdetails.asp?l inkid=119&item=23-174-003

Monitor: 17" X2Gen LCD, $129.99 http://www.onsale.com/onsale/shop/detail~dpno~7181 70.asp

Case/PSU: Generic silver case with a generic 450W PSU. $29.50, free shipping http://www.supergooddeal.com/ProductDetails.asp?Pr oductCode=BCC204-4HA-S-P4&Click=17583

Hard Drive: There's either a 160 GB WD drive for $50 http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/productDetail.do?oi d=67646&cm_keycode=85 or a 100 GB Maxtor for $40 http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?p roduct_code=320167&pfp=feb19sale.

Now, here I left a choice, and a bit of a nasty one. I've got $189.54 left for a motherboard, CPU, and hopefully a video card. I'm going to offer it both ways, one with the best processor I can fit into this, the other with a cheaper processor and a real video card.

Motherboard: Again, there aren't any great motherboard/CPU combo deals at the moment. For those wanting to go all-out on the CPU, I found an Athlon64 3400+ (socket 754, obviously) with a PCCHIPS 861-G (Yeah, crap, but it has onboard audio and video) motherboard for $184 (optioning to update the BIOS and including thermal paste). http://www.pc-infinity.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen =PROD&Store_Code=P&Product_Code=MB7543400

Now, if you do plan on doing a bit of gaming on this, a video card might be a good idea. Unfortunately, one really can't be put in without dropping the processor to a Sempron, so that's what I'll do. Let's face it though, with the video card that could still be afforded, CPU limiting will probably be a non-issue. As far as Semprons go, the 2800+ they chose seemed to be at a very nice price point, so I went with it and an ECS 761GX motherboard, $75 and $49.50 respectively at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16819104245 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813135002

Now there's $65 left for a video card, but I'm going to offer four options; two each for ATI and NVidia, going to $525 as they did or keeping it under $500 (with the strong recommendation of spending the extra $25; performance increases a lot). For the cheaper two, we have a choice between the ATI X1300 128MB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8

I'm working, as much as possible, with the same rules they did, except that I'm pricing everything after rebates.

RAM: Corsair 1GB PC3200, $48.99 after rebate http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3746086

Optical Drive: NEC 3550A, same as they did, $38.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Subm it=ENE&N=50001326&Manufactory=1326

Keyboard, Mouse and Speakers: About as generic as they come, cheap PS2 keyboard, USB mouse, and some sort of speakers, $12.99 including shipping http://www.chiefvalue.com/app/productdetails.asp?l inkid=119&item=23-174-003

Monitor: 17" X2Gen LCD, $129.99 http://www.onsale.com/onsale/shop/detail~dpno~7181 70.asp

Case/PSU: Generic silver case with a generic 450W PSU. $29.50, free shipping http://www.supergooddeal.com/ProductDetails.asp?Pr oductCode=BCC204-4HA-S-P4&Click=17583

Hard Drive: There's either a 160 GB WD drive for $50 http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/productDetail.do?oi d=67646&cm_keycode=85 or a 100 GB Maxtor for $40 http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?p roduct_code=320167&pfp=feb19sale.

Now, here I left a choice, and a bit of a nasty one. I've got $189.54 left for a motherboard, CPU, and hopefully a video card. I'm going to offer it both ways, one with the best processor I can fit into this, the other with a cheaper processor and a real video card.

Motherboard: Again, there aren't any great motherboard/CPU combo deals at the moment. For those wanting to go all-out on the CPU, I found an Athlon64 3400+ (socket 754, obviously) with a PCCHIPS 861-G (Yeah, crap, but it has onboard audio and video) motherboard for $184 (optioning to update the BIOS and including thermal paste). http://www.pc-infinity.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen =PROD&Store_Code=P&Product_Code=MB7543400

Now, if you do plan on doing a bit of gaming on this, a video card might be a good idea. Unfortunately, one really can't be put in without dropping the processor to a Sempron, so that's what I'll do. Let's face it though, with the video card that could still be afforded, CPU limiting will probably be a non-issue. As far as Semprons go, the 2800+ they chose seemed to be at a very nice price point, so I went with it and an ECS 761GX motherboard, $75 and $49.50 respectively at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16819104245 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813135002

Now there's $65 left for a video card, but I'm going to offer four options; two each for ATI and NVidia, going to $525 as they did or keeping it under $500 (with the strong recommendation of spending the extra $25; performance increases a lot). For the cheaper two, we have a choice between the ATI X1300 128MB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8

If you're spending $70 on a video card, I'd rather have this 9600 PRO from newegg, which I consider to be a very reliable vendor. It's got 256MB of ram, DVI and VGA, and TV out, and can play most (semi-)modern games with no problem (I wouldn't try running FEAR on it and expecting high framerates).

And you can get the non-PRO radeon 9600 from newegg for $57.

~W

I thought this topic went away months ago after all the buzz about sperm killing laptops ages ago. In any case I use a Vantec LapCool Notebook (from Newegg of course) - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16834999413 with the added plus of 4port USB hub. Lightweight and slim, it is easy to haul around where ever you go. Actually I do use it at home all the time for playing WoW on my desktop as well as playing couch potato. Luckily I have no concerns about the penis scarring since I don't have those parts o.O

The Antec Phantom is US$150 at newegg. That compares very well with the Silverstone ST30NF from the review: the Phantom is 500W vs the ST30NF which is 300W.

It makes perfect sense to have a fan that spins up when under high load. It'll increase the longevity of the PSU, and the small amount of noise when under load will easily be covered up by the sound from your game, or won't matter too much because you're acutually working on the computer. When it's time to sleep, the fan will spin down.

The best of both worlds (so long as you're not running SETI at home! :)

i was recently looking at the AOpen i915GMm-HFS Micro ATX Intel Motherboard which sports onboard high-def audio and hdtv encoder, dual gigabit ethernet, usb, firewire, sata, sata2, etc. i was thinking of buying one of these, throwing some ddr2 memory, a semi-big sata2 disk and a pci tv tuner. i've read a few reviews of this type of setup for this mobo, but do any /.rs have any experience running linux/mythtv on one of these boards? i would love to turn this into my tv-ripping, low-use home file server. i have priced out this system for under $1600, so i think it would be a worthwile investment. any thoughts?

You can get the OEM version of Windows XP Professional for $137 from NewEgg. It is NOT tied to hardware. Now if you use this you can't call Microsoft for technical support - but who ever does that?
The best reason to run Cedega is that you don't want to run Microsoft software at all and you consider this important enough that you don't mind messing to get a game working on Linux. And of course realizing that some games won't ever run under Linux.
Another similar option would be gaming on a Mac. You reduce the total number of games available to you (including some that work on Cedega) but you don't have to purchase/install/maintain a Windows partition.
It's all about trade offs.

Which is dead simple. Buy the MCE remote.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16880100851

I'm using MCE 2005 with a PVR500MCE card right now. Works great.

Go to newegg (product is right here, and you can buy it. Really. It's that simple.

Microsoft says alot of things: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16832102357

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16832102311

Ever Heard of OEM? You can buy an oem copy of windows when you buy the parts at the same time.

MCE $130 OEM.

Note that you "must purchase with a piece of hardware" to get around Microsoft's "must be sold with hardware" legalese.

You can buy an OEM version:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16832102311

So with Cedega, for $60 per year, I can use my existing Linux PC which is well decked out with lots of RAM, a fast CPU, and a nice video card. As an added bonus I'm supporting WINE development.

I could convert my box into a dual boot box, but then I'll have to pay for Windows ($268, respent every few years as new Windows releases come out), I have to put up with the nuisance of rebooting, and any services my PC provides are unavailable while in Windows.

I could, as you suggest, purchase a dedicated gaming PC. For something roughly equivalent to my Linux PC, I'd be looking at about $700 (respent every few years either in upgrades or replacements), assuming I'll reused the monitor from my Linux PC. And I'll need to find space for the extra machine.

I could buy an XBox or Playstation (I'd hardly call a piece of commodity electronics an "investment"), but I've been having problems getting World of Warcraft, Civ 4, City of Heroes, and Warcraft III running on either platform.

For some people Cedega is a very reasonable option. Encouraging people to spend money unnecessarily is stupid. Many people can be perfectly happy with Cedega and end up saving money. Personally it isn't for me (I play too many games, so I suffer with the dual boot option), but I'm not sneering at people who make that choice. You're not yanking people back to reality, you're ignoring reality.

Not to mention the contest form is slightly misleading. It says 'enter email address' without mentioning you are subscribing to the newegg newsletter, not simply entering the contenst. That is fine, it is in the fine print and it's easy enough to block the newsletter after the fact. However, it adds to the appearance that this is more marketing than 'news'.

This article is clearly a promotion for newegg.com -- I mean, they even promote a freakin contest over at new egg for a Athlon 64 4600+ ! http://promotions.newegg.com/NEPro/AnandTech//inde x.html

Having frequently purchased things from Newegg.com and been relatively satisfied with being close enough to one of their warehouses to get overnight ground shipping on the cheap, I was recently horrified to discover that they have quietly changed the way they offer shipping in order to pad their own pockets. In case you haven't noticed, Newegg.com no longer offers UPS Ground as a shipping option. They have instead created a new service called "UPS 3-day Guaranteed," which, if you read the terms, basically says that you have to pay for UPS 3-Day Select, but will still get ground shipping if you are close enough to receive your order in 3 days or less. For people like me, that equates to a tripling of shipping charges and nothing else. Newegg.com could not be reached for comment as of the writing of this story. Am I the only one who is outraged?

There's an old ComputerWorld story that highlights how Wal-Mart was able to revamp their supply chain by essentially opening up their inventory and sales information down to the individual item. Combine this with their RFID initiative and they've also got a better way to track back room shrinkage in addition to a much more efficient mechanism for tracking individual items than scanning pallet barcodes ..

As for delivery, take a look at this Frontline PBS special .. I think you'll find a similar model in many of the large IT houses and how they're farming out labor costs associated with various code bases (both open and closed source) .. another chapter in the hands that built america ..

Proving once again the relative lack of worth of requiring SSL certificates to be signed.


Well, I think relative is the key word here. What a signed SSL cert does protect against is a man-in-the-middle attack. That is, when I connect to https://secure.newegg.com/ and negotiate an encryption session, and don't get a "this certificate not recognized" error, I can be assured that I've actually negotiated with newegg.com, and not some other guy that's sitting in between me and newegg.com and has given me HIS certificate, and not neweggs. That's the only worth of signed certs. Not much, but you take what you can get.

Buy a Hauppauge PVR-350. It includes TV-in with MPEG2 encoding, TV-out with MPEG2 decoding or with full Xv support, and a nice remote control which works perfectly with LIRC and MythTV.

If you want additional tuners later, I recommend getting a PVR-500; two tuners with MPEG2 encoding in one PCI card.

Buy a Hauppauge PVR-350. It includes TV-in with MPEG2 encoding, TV-out with MPEG2 decoding or with full Xv support, and a nice remote control which works perfectly with LIRC and MythTV.

If you want additional tuners later, I recommend getting a PVR-500; two tuners with MPEG2 encoding in one PCI card.

How about a kernel halt with a blue background and a breif nonsensical message? That would get your attention! Ohhh wait...

Seriously though, the OOM Killer is a more 'friendly' solution than a Kernel OOPS! at least... As long as you dont mind sniping processes vs halting the system. But your very right, there is NO happy way to handle an OOM.
Maybe just have the kernel pass a redirect to your browser to a certain site?

Acer has some damn nice Turion based laptops. And all the reviews I've seen have found favorably for their quality. And you know, this is exactly what the AMD lawsuit against Intel is about. Intel has kept them OUT of big-time OEMs by predatory pricing and other agreements/threats. Not to mention that the best way to get AMD in many of those places you seem to care about is to vote with your dollars. Isn't the performance per watt and per dollar that AMD provides relative to Intel worth it?

Ack...wrong link. Here's the product page.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813188002

Also.. check out some of these:

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productlisting. aspx?spagenum=&category_id=4347&brandid=&k=&c=us&l =en&cs=19&mnf=&prst=&prEnd=&mnfsku=&orderby=&searc htype=&pageb4search=&page=productlisting.aspx&inst ock=&refurbished=

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowImage.asp?image= 13-188-002-01.jpg,13-188-002-02.jpg,13-188-002-03. jpg,13-188-002-04.jpg,13-188-002-05.jpg&CurImage=1 3-188-002-01.jpg&Description=eVGA%20133-K8-NF41%20 Socket%20939%20NVIDIA%20nForce4%20SLI%20ATX%20AMD% 20Motherboard%20-%20Retail

Its an innovative solution to the SLI link. The blue one in the middle is in single link mode, the two yellow ones are used for SLI. I dont believe you can use all three at once.

I wouldn't buy it to actually *press* the keys. I'd be more interested in programming the displays to show something useful.

The preorder price is $100. For that you get 3 96x96 screens. 27,648 pixels at about $0.0036 per pixel. Have you instead considered a cheap 15" LCD monitor? You can get a 1024x768 display for $160. 786,432 pixels at about $0.0002 per pixel. Even buying a cheap PCI video card to drive it doesn't drive the cost per pixel up much. That seems like a better deal.

The mini-Optimus is cute, but just doesn't seem terribly useful for any but the most specialized of applications (maybe buttons on a soda machine or similar application).

The full Optimus keyboard is an interesting idea because it extends something I already have on my desk. Adding a little crappy monitor doesn't seem like much of a win when for a little bit more I can add a full blown second monitor.

One thing to note, the X1900XT has already been released so the X1800XT is already obsolete!

Newegg search for X1900XT.

The X1900XT is a very good chip it seems from reviews so far.

...anyone care to post the bottom line, i.e. for someone building an SLI system...

Oh, right, TFA.

Surprisingly, the prices of these two cards are very close: ATI's X1800 XT & Nvidia's 7800 GTX.

I'm guessing that they used an X1800 XT with 512MB of GDDR3 while most 7800 GTXs only have 256MB GDDR3. They come to be about the same price but I attribute their release dates ... remember Moore's Law.

Newegg has a great datasheet regarding all mainstream cards.

Oh, right, TFA.

Surprisingly, the prices of these two cards are very close: ATI's X1800 XT & Nvidia's 7800 GTX.

I'm guessing that they used an X1800 XT with 512MB of GDDR3 while most 7800 GTXs only have 256MB GDDR3. They come to be about the same price but I attribute their release dates ... remember Moore's Law.

Newegg has a great datasheet regarding all mainstream cards.

Oh, right, TFA.

Surprisingly, the prices of these two cards are very close: ATI's X1800 XT & Nvidia's 7800 GTX.

I'm guessing that they used an X1800 XT with 512MB of GDDR3 while most 7800 GTXs only have 256MB GDDR3. They come to be about the same price but I attribute their release dates ... remember Moore's Law.

Newegg has a great datasheet regarding all mainstream cards.

Put four of these in a spare box. Price before tax+shipping: $480 for over a terrabyte of storage.