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Since we're all a bunch of criminals anyway, this can only help to save us from ourselves.

Save us from ourselves? Dude, if you're trying to pirate movies with one of those ridiculously slow 1x DVD-ROMS from 1998, Microsoft is doing you a favor in making you fork over 16 dollars on a new one.

(I don't see the big deal. I mean, does anyone complain they can't plug their 40 meg MFM hard drive into their new motherboard that only has IDE and SATA ports?)

Shuttle's ST62K has an external power supply, and uses socket 478 cpus:

Review at Silent PC Review
Shuttle Product Page

$215 at Newegg

Yeah, it's just sick how cheap this hardware has gotten! I haven't looked at DVD writer prices in soooo long. Now you can get the NEC model from TFA (actually the next model up) for $38. You can pick one up for the price of a video game.

I bought a Dimension back in 2001 before I really knew much about computers and it came with Rambus RDRAM. (I think it was an upgrade from the standard RAM provided, but I can't recall.) However, when I went to upgrade in 2003, I found that it was incredibly expensive (it still is), assumedly because it never caught on.

So while I support Dell making a decision based on its merits, let's hope this isn't Blu-ray's fate....

Why should I, as a resident of another state, be forced to subsidize your state's government?

There are definitely Sata2 drives out in the market. You just have to look.

When I spec'd this out a few weeks back on another site I believe I excluded a few components (case, HD, DVD drive) because it was about upgrades. But you can build a full, gaming capable PC for under $700 (and by gaming, I include current titles such as FEAR, COD2, and BF2 -- depending on the video card you choose you may have to run at lower rez, but they'll run at reasonable frame rates with all or nearly all graphics options on).

Here's the parts list from NewEgg. If you live outside of the US I certainly cannot vouch for your prices.

ABIT KN8 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $82
Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail - $24
NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - OEM - $40
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM - $53
LITE-ON SK-1688U Beige USB Wired Keyboard - Retail - $6
OCZ Value Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model OCZ4001024V25DC-K - Retail - $82.50
Rosewill RM800U Black 3 Buttons 1x Wheel USB Optical Mouse - OEM - $4.50
Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM - $93
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail - $174
Rosewill RFA120L-W 120mm Sleeve 4 White LEDs LED Light Case Cooling Fan - Retail - $4
XFX PVT43GNDF3 Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

That's quite capable. Add a monitor and speakers -- those weren't included in the price of the "$100" console, so I'm not including them either.

And if you're willing to spend more, for more graphics power:
GIGABYTE GV-NX68G256D-B Geforce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail - $199

eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Desktop PC - Retail - $304

Note that no rebates are calculated into the costs... you could easily get a far bigger/better HD with rebates, and several of the items above have other rebates as well. And no, the above isn't quite what I'd buy -- but I did make sure it had a decent MB, GPU, etc. If I didn't care about that I could've sliced another $50-100 off the price.

When I spec'd this out a few weeks back on another site I believe I excluded a few components (case, HD, DVD drive) because it was about upgrades. But you can build a full, gaming capable PC for under $700 (and by gaming, I include current titles such as FEAR, COD2, and BF2 -- depending on the video card you choose you may have to run at lower rez, but they'll run at reasonable frame rates with all or nearly all graphics options on).

Here's the parts list from NewEgg. If you live outside of the US I certainly cannot vouch for your prices.

ABIT KN8 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $82
Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail - $24
NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - OEM - $40
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM - $53
LITE-ON SK-1688U Beige USB Wired Keyboard - Retail - $6
OCZ Value Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model OCZ4001024V25DC-K - Retail - $82.50
Rosewill RM800U Black 3 Buttons 1x Wheel USB Optical Mouse - OEM - $4.50
Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM - $93
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail - $174
Rosewill RFA120L-W 120mm Sleeve 4 White LEDs LED Light Case Cooling Fan - Retail - $4
XFX PVT43GNDF3 Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

That's quite capable. Add a monitor and speakers -- those weren't included in the price of the "$100" console, so I'm not including them either.

And if you're willing to spend more, for more graphics power:
GIGABYTE GV-NX68G256D-B Geforce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail - $199

eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Desktop PC - Retail - $304

Note that no rebates are calculated into the costs... you could easily get a far bigger/better HD with rebates, and several of the items above have other rebates as well. And no, the above isn't quite what I'd buy -- but I did make sure it had a decent MB, GPU, etc. If I didn't care about that I could've sliced another $50-100 off the price.

When I spec'd this out a few weeks back on another site I believe I excluded a few components (case, HD, DVD drive) because it was about upgrades. But you can build a full, gaming capable PC for under $700 (and by gaming, I include current titles such as FEAR, COD2, and BF2 -- depending on the video card you choose you may have to run at lower rez, but they'll run at reasonable frame rates with all or nearly all graphics options on).

Here's the parts list from NewEgg. If you live outside of the US I certainly cannot vouch for your prices.

ABIT KN8 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $82
Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail - $24
NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - OEM - $40
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM - $53
LITE-ON SK-1688U Beige USB Wired Keyboard - Retail - $6
OCZ Value Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model OCZ4001024V25DC-K - Retail - $82.50
Rosewill RM800U Black 3 Buttons 1x Wheel USB Optical Mouse - OEM - $4.50
Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM - $93
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail - $174
Rosewill RFA120L-W 120mm Sleeve 4 White LEDs LED Light Case Cooling Fan - Retail - $4
XFX PVT43GNDF3 Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

That's quite capable. Add a monitor and speakers -- those weren't included in the price of the "$100" console, so I'm not including them either.

And if you're willing to spend more, for more graphics power:
GIGABYTE GV-NX68G256D-B Geforce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail - $199

eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Desktop PC - Retail - $304

Note that no rebates are calculated into the costs... you could easily get a far bigger/better HD with rebates, and several of the items above have other rebates as well. And no, the above isn't quite what I'd buy -- but I did make sure it had a decent MB, GPU, etc. If I didn't care about that I could've sliced another $50-100 off the price.

When I spec'd this out a few weeks back on another site I believe I excluded a few components (case, HD, DVD drive) because it was about upgrades. But you can build a full, gaming capable PC for under $700 (and by gaming, I include current titles such as FEAR, COD2, and BF2 -- depending on the video card you choose you may have to run at lower rez, but they'll run at reasonable frame rates with all or nearly all graphics options on).

Here's the parts list from NewEgg. If you live outside of the US I certainly cannot vouch for your prices.

ABIT KN8 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $82
Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail - $24
NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - OEM - $40
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM - $53
LITE-ON SK-1688U Beige USB Wired Keyboard - Retail - $6
OCZ Value Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model OCZ4001024V25DC-K - Retail - $82.50
Rosewill RM800U Black 3 Buttons 1x Wheel USB Optical Mouse - OEM - $4.50
Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM - $93
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail - $174
Rosewill RFA120L-W 120mm Sleeve 4 White LEDs LED Light Case Cooling Fan - Retail - $4
XFX PVT43GNDF3 Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

That's quite capable. Add a monitor and speakers -- those weren't included in the price of the "$100" console, so I'm not including them either.

And if you're willing to spend more, for more graphics power:
GIGABYTE GV-NX68G256D-B Geforce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail - $199

eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Desktop PC - Retail - $304

Note that no rebates are calculated into the costs... you could easily get a far bigger/better HD with rebates, and several of the items above have other rebates as well. And no, the above isn't quite what I'd buy -- but I did make sure it had a decent MB, GPU, etc. If I didn't care about that I could've sliced another $50-100 off the price.

When I spec'd this out a few weeks back on another site I believe I excluded a few components (case, HD, DVD drive) because it was about upgrades. But you can build a full, gaming capable PC for under $700 (and by gaming, I include current titles such as FEAR, COD2, and BF2 -- depending on the video card you choose you may have to run at lower rez, but they'll run at reasonable frame rates with all or nearly all graphics options on).

Here's the parts list from NewEgg. If you live outside of the US I certainly cannot vouch for your prices.

ABIT KN8 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $82
Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail - $24
NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - OEM - $40
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM - $53
LITE-ON SK-1688U Beige USB Wired Keyboard - Retail - $6
OCZ Value Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model OCZ4001024V25DC-K - Retail - $82.50
Rosewill RM800U Black 3 Buttons 1x Wheel USB Optical Mouse - OEM - $4.50
Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM - $93
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail - $174
Rosewill RFA120L-W 120mm Sleeve 4 White LEDs LED Light Case Cooling Fan - Retail - $4
XFX PVT43GNDF3 Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

That's quite capable. Add a monitor and speakers -- those weren't included in the price of the "$100" console, so I'm not including them either.

And if you're willing to spend more, for more graphics power:
GIGABYTE GV-NX68G256D-B Geforce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail - $199

eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Desktop PC - Retail - $304

Note that no rebates are calculated into the costs... you could easily get a far bigger/better HD with rebates, and several of the items above have other rebates as well. And no, the above isn't quite what I'd buy -- but I did make sure it had a decent MB, GPU, etc. If I didn't care about that I could've sliced another $50-100 off the price.

When I spec'd this out a few weeks back on another site I believe I excluded a few components (case, HD, DVD drive) because it was about upgrades. But you can build a full, gaming capable PC for under $700 (and by gaming, I include current titles such as FEAR, COD2, and BF2 -- depending on the video card you choose you may have to run at lower rez, but they'll run at reasonable frame rates with all or nearly all graphics options on).

Here's the parts list from NewEgg. If you live outside of the US I certainly cannot vouch for your prices.

ABIT KN8 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $82
Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail - $24
NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - OEM - $40
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM - $53
LITE-ON SK-1688U Beige USB Wired Keyboard - Retail - $6
OCZ Value Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model OCZ4001024V25DC-K - Retail - $82.50
Rosewill RM800U Black 3 Buttons 1x Wheel USB Optical Mouse - OEM - $4.50
Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM - $93
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail - $174
Rosewill RFA120L-W 120mm Sleeve 4 White LEDs LED Light Case Cooling Fan - Retail - $4
XFX PVT43GNDF3 Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

That's quite capable. Add a monitor and speakers -- those weren't included in the price of the "$100" console, so I'm not including them either.

And if you're willing to spend more, for more graphics power:
GIGABYTE GV-NX68G256D-B Geforce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail - $199

eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Desktop PC - Retail - $304

Note that no rebates are calculated into the costs... you could easily get a far bigger/better HD with rebates, and several of the items above have other rebates as well. And no, the above isn't quite what I'd buy -- but I did make sure it had a decent MB, GPU, etc. If I didn't care about that I could've sliced another $50-100 off the price.

When I spec'd this out a few weeks back on another site I believe I excluded a few components (case, HD, DVD drive) because it was about upgrades. But you can build a full, gaming capable PC for under $700 (and by gaming, I include current titles such as FEAR, COD2, and BF2 -- depending on the video card you choose you may have to run at lower rez, but they'll run at reasonable frame rates with all or nearly all graphics options on).

Here's the parts list from NewEgg. If you live outside of the US I certainly cannot vouch for your prices.

ABIT KN8 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $82
Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail - $24
NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - OEM - $40
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM - $53
LITE-ON SK-1688U Beige USB Wired Keyboard - Retail - $6
OCZ Value Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model OCZ4001024V25DC-K - Retail - $82.50
Rosewill RM800U Black 3 Buttons 1x Wheel USB Optical Mouse - OEM - $4.50
Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM - $93
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail - $174
Rosewill RFA120L-W 120mm Sleeve 4 White LEDs LED Light Case Cooling Fan - Retail - $4
XFX PVT43GNDF3 Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

That's quite capable. Add a monitor and speakers -- those weren't included in the price of the "$100" console, so I'm not including them either.

And if you're willing to spend more, for more graphics power:
GIGABYTE GV-NX68G256D-B Geforce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail - $199

eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Desktop PC - Retail - $304

Note that no rebates are calculated into the costs... you could easily get a far bigger/better HD with rebates, and several of the items above have other rebates as well. And no, the above isn't quite what I'd buy -- but I did make sure it had a decent MB, GPU, etc. If I didn't care about that I could've sliced another $50-100 off the price.

When I spec'd this out a few weeks back on another site I believe I excluded a few components (case, HD, DVD drive) because it was about upgrades. But you can build a full, gaming capable PC for under $700 (and by gaming, I include current titles such as FEAR, COD2, and BF2 -- depending on the video card you choose you may have to run at lower rez, but they'll run at reasonable frame rates with all or nearly all graphics options on).

Here's the parts list from NewEgg. If you live outside of the US I certainly cannot vouch for your prices.

ABIT KN8 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $82
Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail - $24
NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - OEM - $40
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM - $53
LITE-ON SK-1688U Beige USB Wired Keyboard - Retail - $6
OCZ Value Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model OCZ4001024V25DC-K - Retail - $82.50
Rosewill RM800U Black 3 Buttons 1x Wheel USB Optical Mouse - OEM - $4.50
Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM - $93
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail - $174
Rosewill RFA120L-W 120mm Sleeve 4 White LEDs LED Light Case Cooling Fan - Retail - $4
XFX PVT43GNDF3 Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

That's quite capable. Add a monitor and speakers -- those weren't included in the price of the "$100" console, so I'm not including them either.

And if you're willing to spend more, for more graphics power:
GIGABYTE GV-NX68G256D-B Geforce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail - $199

eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Desktop PC - Retail - $304

Note that no rebates are calculated into the costs... you could easily get a far bigger/better HD with rebates, and several of the items above have other rebates as well. And no, the above isn't quite what I'd buy -- but I did make sure it had a decent MB, GPU, etc. If I didn't care about that I could've sliced another $50-100 off the price.

When I spec'd this out a few weeks back on another site I believe I excluded a few components (case, HD, DVD drive) because it was about upgrades. But you can build a full, gaming capable PC for under $700 (and by gaming, I include current titles such as FEAR, COD2, and BF2 -- depending on the video card you choose you may have to run at lower rez, but they'll run at reasonable frame rates with all or nearly all graphics options on).

Here's the parts list from NewEgg. If you live outside of the US I certainly cannot vouch for your prices.

ABIT KN8 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $82
Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail - $24
NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - OEM - $40
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM - $53
LITE-ON SK-1688U Beige USB Wired Keyboard - Retail - $6
OCZ Value Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model OCZ4001024V25DC-K - Retail - $82.50
Rosewill RM800U Black 3 Buttons 1x Wheel USB Optical Mouse - OEM - $4.50
Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM - $93
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail - $174
Rosewill RFA120L-W 120mm Sleeve 4 White LEDs LED Light Case Cooling Fan - Retail - $4
XFX PVT43GNDF3 Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

That's quite capable. Add a monitor and speakers -- those weren't included in the price of the "$100" console, so I'm not including them either.

And if you're willing to spend more, for more graphics power:
GIGABYTE GV-NX68G256D-B Geforce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail - $199

eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Desktop PC - Retail - $304

Note that no rebates are calculated into the costs... you could easily get a far bigger/better HD with rebates, and several of the items above have other rebates as well. And no, the above isn't quite what I'd buy -- but I did make sure it had a decent MB, GPU, etc. If I didn't care about that I could've sliced another $50-100 off the price.

When I spec'd this out a few weeks back on another site I believe I excluded a few components (case, HD, DVD drive) because it was about upgrades. But you can build a full, gaming capable PC for under $700 (and by gaming, I include current titles such as FEAR, COD2, and BF2 -- depending on the video card you choose you may have to run at lower rez, but they'll run at reasonable frame rates with all or nearly all graphics options on).

Here's the parts list from NewEgg. If you live outside of the US I certainly cannot vouch for your prices.

ABIT KN8 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $82
Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail - $24
NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - OEM - $40
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM - $53
LITE-ON SK-1688U Beige USB Wired Keyboard - Retail - $6
OCZ Value Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model OCZ4001024V25DC-K - Retail - $82.50
Rosewill RM800U Black 3 Buttons 1x Wheel USB Optical Mouse - OEM - $4.50
Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM - $93
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail - $174
Rosewill RFA120L-W 120mm Sleeve 4 White LEDs LED Light Case Cooling Fan - Retail - $4
XFX PVT43GNDF3 Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

That's quite capable. Add a monitor and speakers -- those weren't included in the price of the "$100" console, so I'm not including them either.

And if you're willing to spend more, for more graphics power:
GIGABYTE GV-NX68G256D-B Geforce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail - $199

eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Desktop PC - Retail - $304

Note that no rebates are calculated into the costs... you could easily get a far bigger/better HD with rebates, and several of the items above have other rebates as well. And no, the above isn't quite what I'd buy -- but I did make sure it had a decent MB, GPU, etc. If I didn't care about that I could've sliced another $50-100 off the price.

When I spec'd this out a few weeks back on another site I believe I excluded a few components (case, HD, DVD drive) because it was about upgrades. But you can build a full, gaming capable PC for under $700 (and by gaming, I include current titles such as FEAR, COD2, and BF2 -- depending on the video card you choose you may have to run at lower rez, but they'll run at reasonable frame rates with all or nearly all graphics options on).

Here's the parts list from NewEgg. If you live outside of the US I certainly cannot vouch for your prices.

ABIT KN8 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $82
Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail - $24
NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - OEM - $40
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM - $53
LITE-ON SK-1688U Beige USB Wired Keyboard - Retail - $6
OCZ Value Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model OCZ4001024V25DC-K - Retail - $82.50
Rosewill RM800U Black 3 Buttons 1x Wheel USB Optical Mouse - OEM - $4.50
Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM - $93
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail - $174
Rosewill RFA120L-W 120mm Sleeve 4 White LEDs LED Light Case Cooling Fan - Retail - $4
XFX PVT43GNDF3 Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

That's quite capable. Add a monitor and speakers -- those weren't included in the price of the "$100" console, so I'm not including them either.

And if you're willing to spend more, for more graphics power:
GIGABYTE GV-NX68G256D-B Geforce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail - $199

eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Desktop PC - Retail - $304

Note that no rebates are calculated into the costs... you could easily get a far bigger/better HD with rebates, and several of the items above have other rebates as well. And no, the above isn't quite what I'd buy -- but I did make sure it had a decent MB, GPU, etc. If I didn't care about that I could've sliced another $50-100 off the price.

When I spec'd this out a few weeks back on another site I believe I excluded a few components (case, HD, DVD drive) because it was about upgrades. But you can build a full, gaming capable PC for under $700 (and by gaming, I include current titles such as FEAR, COD2, and BF2 -- depending on the video card you choose you may have to run at lower rez, but they'll run at reasonable frame rates with all or nearly all graphics options on).

Here's the parts list from NewEgg. If you live outside of the US I certainly cannot vouch for your prices.

ABIT KN8 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $82
Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail - $24
NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - OEM - $40
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM - $53
LITE-ON SK-1688U Beige USB Wired Keyboard - Retail - $6
OCZ Value Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model OCZ4001024V25DC-K - Retail - $82.50
Rosewill RM800U Black 3 Buttons 1x Wheel USB Optical Mouse - OEM - $4.50
Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM - $93
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail - $174
Rosewill RFA120L-W 120mm Sleeve 4 White LEDs LED Light Case Cooling Fan - Retail - $4
XFX PVT43GNDF3 Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

That's quite capable. Add a monitor and speakers -- those weren't included in the price of the "$100" console, so I'm not including them either.

And if you're willing to spend more, for more graphics power:
GIGABYTE GV-NX68G256D-B Geforce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail - $199

eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Desktop PC - Retail - $304

Note that no rebates are calculated into the costs... you could easily get a far bigger/better HD with rebates, and several of the items above have other rebates as well. And no, the above isn't quite what I'd buy -- but I did make sure it had a decent MB, GPU, etc. If I didn't care about that I could've sliced another $50-100 off the price.

When I spec'd this out a few weeks back on another site I believe I excluded a few components (case, HD, DVD drive) because it was about upgrades. But you can build a full, gaming capable PC for under $700 (and by gaming, I include current titles such as FEAR, COD2, and BF2 -- depending on the video card you choose you may have to run at lower rez, but they'll run at reasonable frame rates with all or nearly all graphics options on).

Here's the parts list from NewEgg. If you live outside of the US I certainly cannot vouch for your prices.

ABIT KN8 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $82
Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail - $24
NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - OEM - $40
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM - $53
LITE-ON SK-1688U Beige USB Wired Keyboard - Retail - $6
OCZ Value Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model OCZ4001024V25DC-K - Retail - $82.50
Rosewill RM800U Black 3 Buttons 1x Wheel USB Optical Mouse - OEM - $4.50
Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM - $93
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail - $174
Rosewill RFA120L-W 120mm Sleeve 4 White LEDs LED Light Case Cooling Fan - Retail - $4
XFX PVT43GNDF3 Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

That's quite capable. Add a monitor and speakers -- those weren't included in the price of the "$100" console, so I'm not including them either.

And if you're willing to spend more, for more graphics power:
GIGABYTE GV-NX68G256D-B Geforce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail - $199

eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Desktop PC - Retail - $304

Note that no rebates are calculated into the costs... you could easily get a far bigger/better HD with rebates, and several of the items above have other rebates as well. And no, the above isn't quite what I'd buy -- but I did make sure it had a decent MB, GPU, etc. If I didn't care about that I could've sliced another $50-100 off the price.

Spending less time online is not the answer. That's like seeking to decrease the number of car accident related deaths by requesting that people drive less. This latest worm, like many before it, exploits a service that is tied to... wait for it... IIS and MS SQL server. These two services:

A) Have virtually no use to most users (I guess some software uses MSDE *puke*)
B) Should not be exposed on a public IP (a.k.a. you should be running a firewall)

A $55 firewall would significantly impede the spread of worms like this.

IMO, responsible ISPs should distribute network devices that at least perform NAT when issuing IP addresses to computers behind their connection. In FL Bellsouth DSL issues a Westell router/modem. It's a pretty decent little device. It handles DHCP, NAT, offers bridged ethernet mode, and has decent support for port forwarding. You can connect it to a $15 5-port switch and connect up to four computers with zero additional configuration. Cable providers seem to be the worst about issuing modems that pass the public IP on directly to the device connected to it.

To make a long story short, we don't need to spend less time online, we (and ISPs) just need to be responsible about how we connect.

I don't know if you've noticed, but CD drives arent exactly expencive any more

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16827101205
12.99 (Its even a lite-on, so its not total crap) Isnt that less than the price of the average CD in your collection?

Whats that? You wanted a CD burner?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16827106999

19.99! You'll have to pay a 7 dollar premium for that!

I don't know if you've noticed, but CD drives arent exactly expencive any more

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16827101205
12.99 (Its even a lite-on, so its not total crap) Isnt that less than the price of the average CD in your collection?

Whats that? You wanted a CD burner?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16827106999

19.99! You'll have to pay a 7 dollar premium for that!

300 GB SCSIs are already out. Pretty impressive for a 10kRPM drive, its 4 platters, so 75G/platter.

$12.99 + $4.00 shipping and that's for a retail boxed one, not OEM. That's about as much as buying one CD these days.

...to a whole new world.

Limited time offer. While supplies last! Only $5.15!! (3 Day Shipping only $4.99!!!)

I recently did just what you are planning to. Do NOT buy the DiNivo and similar crap, the keys are extremely mushy.

I would suggest getting a Rosewill RK600, it has proven to be an extremely nice keyboard for my gaming/fast typing needs, and it has a very crisp laptop action. And it's about $100 less than similar Logitech offerings. The only downside is you can't get a wireless version, personally I don't care for wireless in my keyboards and mice, but I suppose if you do that's the only thing that might make it a less than wonderful keyboard.

Happy boot errorless holidays

Here are some through NewEgg. We use some of the keyboards below at work for our Operations group. They take some getting used to if you're used to a full-sized keyboard, but we don't have any quality issues with them so far. And the prices aren't that bad either. You can get a full list by going to the Keyboards sub-section then doing a search for all keyboards with a "Mini" design style.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16823166015
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16823166005
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16823192002

I'm sure that other on-line and retail stores will have a number of these as well. I usually buy all of my stuff from NewEgg, so that's the first place I went to.

Here are some through NewEgg. We use some of the keyboards below at work for our Operations group. They take some getting used to if you're used to a full-sized keyboard, but we don't have any quality issues with them so far. And the prices aren't that bad either. You can get a full list by going to the Keyboards sub-section then doing a search for all keyboards with a "Mini" design style.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16823166015
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16823166005
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16823192002

I'm sure that other on-line and retail stores will have a number of these as well. I usually buy all of my stuff from NewEgg, so that's the first place I went to.

Here are some through NewEgg. We use some of the keyboards below at work for our Operations group. They take some getting used to if you're used to a full-sized keyboard, but we don't have any quality issues with them so far. And the prices aren't that bad either. You can get a full list by going to the Keyboards sub-section then doing a search for all keyboards with a "Mini" design style.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16823166015
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16823166005
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16823192002

I'm sure that other on-line and retail stores will have a number of these as well. I usually buy all of my stuff from NewEgg, so that's the first place I went to.

use a reputable dealer like Amazon or NewEgg for any electronics.

Also, since this article is about cameras: B&H Photo http://www.bhphotovideo.com/ is well respected. Not the bottom barrel cheapest, but reputable and I've never had a problem with them.

NewEgg http://www.newegg.com/ is great, although they've recently defaulted to UPS (oops) shipping, and FedEx now costs extra.
Amazon http://www.amazon.com/ is okay, but make sure you're actually buying from Amazon directly, and not one of the scammy "partner stores" which link off of the Amazon page.

There's a similar drive to the tiny "fit in your ear" drive called the PQI iStick. I had one for awhile and it was just slightly larger than the one pictured. It came with a credit card sized holder that would allow me to fit two in my pocket. Unfortunately the small size caused me to lose it, however. PQI iStick 512MB.

1920x1080 res at 60% quality at only slightly more than real time on the dual G5? I dig that. Gonna' have to check that out...I'm on the g/f's G5 now. =D

Although a friend of mine who works for broadcaster-codec developer Main Concept told me that they've recently developed a 1920x1080 codec for Pentium 4 machines that encodes two passes at real time. Two-pass encodes are usually VBR, as opposed to a CBR encode that is usually used for percentage-based quality, and would generally take twice as long to perform. To do two passes with h.264 at real time for 1920x1080 is impressive indeed, since I did 2-pass encodes using x264 for DVD resolution (~720x480) at a bit under half real time (1-pass encodes, of course, were more or less at real-time - depending mostly on which deblocking options I picked) on my Athlon 64 machine. Although that was months ago when most AVCs were fairly early on in their lifetimes.

By the way, I'm impressed that you manage to deal with 60gb with OS X also installed for your PVR. I'm doing standard res TV, and the 80gb in my MythTV box is awful slim! I made heavy use of it for today's (American) football games. Although, there are 7200 RPM drives all the way up to 100gb (I'm using a 60gb Hitachi in my laptop, myself). I guess you switched it out a while ago before they got to that size?

They're really expensive in 2.5", though, and I'd rather just spend the dough on 3.5"ers for my file server.

Plasma sucks. Enjoy it's burn in and short life time.

It's all about the 45inch LCD with TRUE HI-DEF at 1080p (1920 x 1080 resolution) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16850000002

Read the fine print on the rebate, it probably says it will take up to 3 or 4 months. That's legalese for it will take 3 to 4 months. But really, the reason for this seems to be to allow offering huge doorbuster sales without people coming in and buying ten or twenty of an item (usually at a loss to the company) and then turning around and selling them at a higher price on Ebay or wherever (note that the fine print allows only one rebate per household, although they usually let you get away with two or three.)

That's the price you pay for getting a halfway decent 120 gig Western Digital Hard Drive for about $40 (or rather about $100, and then you get $60 back in a few months.) If you're not comfortable with this, you can just go and buy pretty much the same hard drive from Best Buy for about $110. Or just get it from Newegg, well, closest I found is a 160 gig, pretty much same drive otherwise, for $76.00.

But the point of the really good deal on the Circuit City stuff isn't for them to make money on the sale. The point is for them to get you in the store, where you will hopefully buy something else. But I've never really been pressured into buying more thigns, and have generally found the staff to be very helpful when there are stocking issues... Last time I got something that they had on massive rebate, they didn't have any in stock buy did tell me when the next expected shipment was (about 2-3 hours later.) Are they offering the rebates out of a sense of benevolence? No, but I didn't take them out of a sense of pity for the company either. I bought the stuff I wanted and filled out and mailed in the rebates cause that was a way for me to get stuff I wanted at a pretty decent price.

OK, I officially mediawiki too much. Please allow me to rephrase:

Then I swapped it for an 2915ABG, which is natively supported in Linux just fine.

Depends on what wifi card you're talking about. My Acer Aspire used to have a Broadcom chip controlling the wifi, for which my only solution was Ndiswrapper (which incidentally worked pretty well, so long as routers weren't encrypted using anything other than WEP). Then I swapped it for an [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8 2E16833106219&ATT=Network+Wireless+Ada&CMP=OTC-yah 00TT Intel 2915ABG], which is [http://support.intel.com/support/notebook/sb/CS-0 06408.htm natively supported in Linux just fine].

1TB is a bit under $1k actually. Here on NewEgg you can snag one for $795
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822155306

Roughly 80 cents per gigabyte (assuming the really dumb approximation of 1TB = 1000GB and not 1024... dumb HDD manufacturers)

Get yourself 4x 4-channel security system PCI cards (or 2x 8-ch, if they support high enough framerates, or a 16-ch..., or any combination...) and put them in a powerful computer with a good graphics card. All you need to do is have sixteen instances of media players (tiled across the screen) running simultaneously.
Security systems even use BNC by default!

Windows XP Home: $88
Windows XP Pro: $139
Office 2003 Student/Teacher Edition: $129
Office 2003 Basic Edition: $169

Check Nextag for even lower prices.

Plus if you a student at many colleges (at least all CC's around here in Fl) the school will give you XP Pro, Visual Studio (Enterprise Edition), etc for "free," though that's more like a dealer giving you something free so you get addicted...

Did you pull these numbers out of your ass, microshill? Let's see, windows XP professional OEM costs $146.95. You can get a slight discount by buying a 30-pack for $4,249.95. A pre-installed version from a Dell or HPaq (without the media, so you can't reinstall and configure it yourself) would cost a little less, but certainly nowhere near $50.

Office 2003 professional (again, OEM, not retail) costs $319.95. Yes, it's also a little cheaper from a big vendor but nowhere near $100.

Please show me where you can buy windows for $50 and office for $100.

Did you pull these numbers out of your ass, microshill? Let's see, windows XP professional OEM costs $146.95. You can get a slight discount by buying a 30-pack for $4,249.95. A pre-installed version from a Dell or HPaq (without the media, so you can't reinstall and configure it yourself) would cost a little less, but certainly nowhere near $50.

Office 2003 professional (again, OEM, not retail) costs $319.95. Yes, it's also a little cheaper from a big vendor but nowhere near $100.

Please show me where you can buy windows for $50 and office for $100.

Did you pull these numbers out of your ass, microshill? Let's see, windows XP professional OEM costs $146.95. You can get a slight discount by buying a 30-pack for $4,249.95. A pre-installed version from a Dell or HPaq (without the media, so you can't reinstall and configure it yourself) would cost a little less, but certainly nowhere near $50.

Office 2003 professional (again, OEM, not retail) costs $319.95. Yes, it's also a little cheaper from a big vendor but nowhere near $100.

Please show me where you can buy windows for $50 and office for $100.

newegg

Oops.. Good catch. Replace with
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16814170091

An XServe RAID can hook directly to a G5 tower

Assuming you are willing to make the pre-existing G5 your file server, then yes, the "plus the cost of whatever server you hook it up to" goes to nothing. That's why I separated that cost out. Unless there's something wrong with my $13,000 number my facts seem pretty well checked. Still... not a good deal.

For a more or less direct comparison I'd suggest looking at the promise VTrak M500f.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16811777006
Add 14 500GB drives at $360 each and your total comes to under $10,000. I consider chaging $3000 too much to qualify for my vague "hardly a good value" proclamation above. In my opinion, the VTrak M500f in and of itself is wildy overpriced and creates an array with far too high a ratio of drive cost to overhead cost (0.75) and the Apple product's ratio is even worse than that (around 0.63) both not counting server cost and both using very expensive drives (which makes the ratio higher than it should be).

A good deal for an array in my book is one with a ratio over 1, including server cost, using the cheepest cost/gig high quality drives available. Tough but doable. Here's a rough first stab at a design with only about $1,800 of overhead cost to bring 15 drives online:
http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/WishList/WishS hareShow.asp?ID=1771473
Its not comperable to either of the above products for ease of setup but far superior for cost and level of functionality. Using $360 500GB drives like the above configurations this comes out with a drive/overhead cost ratio of 3.0 which shows just how much too much they are charging for the above products.

An XServe RAID can hook directly to a G5 tower

Assuming you are willing to make the pre-existing G5 your file server, then yes, the "plus the cost of whatever server you hook it up to" goes to nothing. That's why I separated that cost out. Unless there's something wrong with my $13,000 number my facts seem pretty well checked. Still... not a good deal.

For a more or less direct comparison I'd suggest looking at the promise VTrak M500f.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16811777006
Add 14 500GB drives at $360 each and your total comes to under $10,000. I consider chaging $3000 too much to qualify for my vague "hardly a good value" proclamation above. In my opinion, the VTrak M500f in and of itself is wildy overpriced and creates an array with far too high a ratio of drive cost to overhead cost (0.75) and the Apple product's ratio is even worse than that (around 0.63) both not counting server cost and both using very expensive drives (which makes the ratio higher than it should be).

A good deal for an array in my book is one with a ratio over 1, including server cost, using the cheepest cost/gig high quality drives available. Tough but doable. Here's a rough first stab at a design with only about $1,800 of overhead cost to bring 15 drives online:
http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/WishList/WishS hareShow.asp?ID=1771473
Its not comperable to either of the above products for ease of setup but far superior for cost and level of functionality. Using $360 500GB drives like the above configurations this comes out with a drive/overhead cost ratio of 3.0 which shows just how much too much they are charging for the above products.

2GB/session isn't really enough information to design a storage solution but I'll dump out some generic big, reliable and cheep storage suggestions.

For large scale reliable storage I dislike both optical and tape. They both quickly become more work to manage than it's worth and have serious reliability issues. Hard drive based is the way to go and since hard drives do fail and that is a bad thing, it's best to use RAID. It's especially a good idea since RAID is getting easier, since hard drives are getting cheaper per unit and since SerialATA is making it easy to hook them up right.

Heres a basic design that I'm actually working on for a home server for myself:
http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/WishList/WishS hareShow.asp?ID=1764600
It's a 3U rack mountable 2TB storage server. Put a Linux distro on it with some small RAID1 boot partitions and a software RAID5 storage partition, throw samba and some email-home config to notify of drive failures and you've got a decent place to store up to 1000 of those 2GB sessions. Zip up the old ones if needed for more space. If rack-mounting isn't desirable there are cheaper desktop cases that would probably be appropriate.

If this is overkill a 4 drive RAID5 array or even a 2 drive RAID1 array is much much easier to accomplish. Standard case, motherboard, power supply and drives with a Linux distro and you're done. Hardware RAID is also an option but since software RAID's high CPU usage wouldn't be an issue here I'd go that route.

It's actually cheaper than DDR or SDRAM.

Even 200-pin DDR2 SODIMMs are reasonably priced.

It's actually cheaper than DDR or SDRAM.

Even 200-pin DDR2 SODIMMs are reasonably priced.

It's actually cheaper than DDR or SDRAM.

Even 200-pin DDR2 SODIMMs are reasonably priced.