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...and I feel your pain when it comes to paying tax on items ordered online. I have built several systems through the years, and I, like you, am building another one now to replace my old P4. After you have done your research and decided what you want, here are some places to compare prices which will not charge you tax when shipped to TN:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Home.jsp

http://www.directron.com/

http://www.ewiz.com/index.php

For specialty items, like heat sinks, I sometimes buy here:

http://www.frozencpu.com/index.html?id=wdw9Exum

Above all though, compare prices using these useful sites, for you may find the same part elsewhere even cheaper:

http://www.pricewatch.com/

http://www.google.com/products

Newegg is great for comparing parts and reading detailed specs/reviews, but the tax and shipping generally lead to the parts being more expensive than if they were ordered elsewhere.

I agree with most of what donaldm is saying. Though, you may want to check out a dual monitor setup (if your desk is big enough). It really is impressive and gives you the ability to have a web page open with game hints, while you are playing the game on the other screen. Also, if you don't have a clock, you can move the taskbar to that screen and see the clock. If your game crashes and it doesn't fall to the desktop, you've still got the second screen to do stuff in.

Check out what other people are building over at http://www.hardocp.com/.

My favorite shops have already been mentioned: Newegg, ZipZoomFly. I've also had some success with vendors that advertise on pricewatch.

Single-layer (25GB) Non-rewriteable Blu-Ray discs are $8-$10/each.

Single-layer (25GB) rewriteable Blu-Ray disks are ~$16-18. (look for BD-RE)

HOWEVER:
A Blu-Ray burner will set you back > $200

16 GB USB flash drives can be had for ~$40

32 GB USB flash drives are twice the price at ~$80

So yes, *RIGHT NOW*, if you buy a BD burner and a spindle of 10 BD-RE disks, you'll spend less money than you would if you bought an equivalent amount of USB flash storage.

This isn't the fairest comparison, because with the flash example I'm providing, the reader is encapsulated with the storage, so you're paying for it every time. (as well as packaging) That being said, almost every computer these days has a USB port, as do many set-top boxes. Not every computer or home has a BD player.

The price of flash continues to drop. The price of BD media and burners will come down. The question will be, which falls the fastest?

Single-layer (25GB) Non-rewriteable Blu-Ray discs are $8-$10/each.

Single-layer (25GB) rewriteable Blu-Ray disks are ~$16-18. (look for BD-RE)

HOWEVER:
A Blu-Ray burner will set you back > $200

16 GB USB flash drives can be had for ~$40

32 GB USB flash drives are twice the price at ~$80

So yes, *RIGHT NOW*, if you buy a BD burner and a spindle of 10 BD-RE disks, you'll spend less money than you would if you bought an equivalent amount of USB flash storage.

This isn't the fairest comparison, because with the flash example I'm providing, the reader is encapsulated with the storage, so you're paying for it every time. (as well as packaging) That being said, almost every computer these days has a USB port, as do many set-top boxes. Not every computer or home has a BD player.

The price of flash continues to drop. The price of BD media and burners will come down. The question will be, which falls the fastest?

Single-layer (25GB) Non-rewriteable Blu-Ray discs are $8-$10/each.

Single-layer (25GB) rewriteable Blu-Ray disks are ~$16-18. (look for BD-RE)

HOWEVER:
A Blu-Ray burner will set you back > $200

16 GB USB flash drives can be had for ~$40

32 GB USB flash drives are twice the price at ~$80

So yes, *RIGHT NOW*, if you buy a BD burner and a spindle of 10 BD-RE disks, you'll spend less money than you would if you bought an equivalent amount of USB flash storage.

This isn't the fairest comparison, because with the flash example I'm providing, the reader is encapsulated with the storage, so you're paying for it every time. (as well as packaging) That being said, almost every computer these days has a USB port, as do many set-top boxes. Not every computer or home has a BD player.

The price of flash continues to drop. The price of BD media and burners will come down. The question will be, which falls the fastest?

Pricewatch:
$180 for CORE2 1.86GHz mobo+CPU+RAM
$ 40 for a mid-tower case w/600w
$ 45 for a decent but very small HD
$ 25 for a DVD-combo drive
---
$290 - This is from Pricewatch, four vendors involved.

Dell
$279 for a Inspirion 530, dumbed down with a Celeron 2GHz pre-infected with Vista, but with a bigger HD and double the RAM (2GB).

Apple
I'll get running OSX on a $230 AppleTV, or Linux for that matter, out of the way first. Only brought up because we're talking about doing it the geek way and breaking though the fear of doing so. This is almost a no-OS situation like with Pricewatch, but the box is at least useful as an AppleTV when you get it.

For the "normal" comparison, their bottom-end machine is the $600 Mac mini. Core2 1.83GHz, 1GB RAM, and a decent small HD. OS X comes with it. As does iLife*.

---
So, all that to point out that $290, $280 and $230 are not very far apart and all come with significant limitations or hassles, especially if something goes wrong later where vendor support is required. If that's your cup of tea it is all well and good.

$600 will get you a similar system in terms of hardware, but with a much better software load, higher quality components (Consumer Reports, nearly 70,000 in the sample size), and a verifiably better user experience all around. Assuming you're looking for something in this performance range, there are no limitations and maximum flexibility with this system, as well as access to the most software.

-Matt

*If you haven't used it, OS X and iLife are a stark contrast to the bloatware on any other OEM PC....akin to waking up from a bad dream. So is K|X|Ubuntu Desktop for that matter.

$200 today buys a 1 TB drive.

For $200 you could almost get two 1TB drives.

Looks like those Promise TX4 cards still cost $50 each (except a few dubious offers on eBay). And 300GB drives still cost about $100 each. Are you posting from the future?

SATA is 1.5Gbps (SATA2 is 3Gbps). How is that slower than 100Mbps ethernet (even if the ethernet does really max at about 60Mbps)?

Does SATA slow down in the future, or does 100Mbps speed up?

for under $200!
http://www.pricewatch.com/flash_card_memory/usb_32gb.htm

An increase of capacity at around roughly 1000x in a decade. I don't know if the trend will continue.... but if it does we'll be at 32TB in another decade.

I guess even those who don't use music players can be thankful for those devices as they, along with digital cameras, were really were the commercial products on the market that really sold and pushed the flash envelope. Sure there were PDAs/GPS units and other stuff, but in comparison they really niche markets that were happy with 256MB or whatever in most cases. Now things like the airbook (and all the SSD notebooks to follow, yes there were earlier ones I know), iPhone and the convergence of devices will further drive the market for more space.

I call fowl!!

I just looked around on http://pricewatch.com/

9700 $189
9600 $51

That includes shipping

I say, think twice about the DVD burner. Instead, take a pocketPC and foldable keyboard. Light, no hard drive (fragile and bad at high altitude) and cheaper than a laptop. They're quite rugged, from my experience of carrying a few different models unprotected in my pocket for the last 10 years. Instead of burning DVDs, buy a few 4 GB SD cards for $20 each. That's 1000 photos per card at 4 MB each (which is a very generous estimate unless you insist on RAW images - in which case it's still only 10 cents per 20 MB image). I find a pocketPC screen OK for writing text, though admittedly inferior for web browsing.

These people have never been to a Fry's. If you've never been to one, picture this: they sell porn and energy drinks within 20 feet of each other.

Obviously, you've never been to a Fry's, either. They have more than 50 feet of rechargeable batteries. The porn and the energy drinks, are, alas, some 170 yards apart in what appears to have once been an aircraft hangar for dirgibles.

I shop at Fry's, when I feel like walking an endurance walk-athon in order to get my $70 motherboard today rather than 3 days from now, at my doorstep. And if porn is what gets you to go, perhaps you might consider some alternatives?

PS: I've never used pornotube. I googled "youtube clone porn" and it came up. Truthfully, I don't care about porn - I'm happily married and nothing a porn video portrays compares to the real thing from a willing partner. But if that's your gig...

Pricewatch, K6-2, 500MHz, $26

Ebay, K6-2

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350000264353

Okay, well, they're $30... but what's $10 between friends?

I actually use my Nintendo DS to play music.

If you already have one, for $40 to $50 US you can get a card that'll let you load homebrew, then add a 2gb micro SD card for $23 and you have have yourself a decently priced player capable of playing just about any audio and a couple video formats. There is even a homebrew music player that mimics an iPod if thats what you're looking for.

R4 Card: http://www.supercardnds.com/catalog.asp?catid=10544
Micro SD Card: http://www.pricewatch.com/flash_card_memory/microsd_2gb.htm

Thats of course assuming you already own the NDS hardware.

The companies' logic is that programmer cost a lot. It's actually much cheaper, they think, to throw some money in buying more hardware to make up for the lack of optimisations in the code, than to waster the precious ( = expensive in terms of salary ) programmer's time.

I run such a company. Our flagship product requires 400 MB of disk space for install on Windows, and (if you include the X11 and XCode libraries on Mac OS) about 1.5 GB on Macintosh.

I realize that this is a fair amount of disk space. I also really don't care. 1 GB of disk space represents a net user cost of about 25 cents.

A quarter.

And the software generally runs quite well on a P3 1 Ghz system that can be readily had for $50 on the used computer marketplace, even though its written in a lazy, inefficient, interpreted scripting language.

Yes, $50.

How much time do you think I spend worrying about this? None at all. Let me assure you, my clients spend much more than a quarter to buy the use of our software! How much crying would YOU do over this?

If the market wants Windows XP, let them buy it until there isn't enough plastic left on Earth to mint another CD.

Hey ... you can still buy brand new copies of Windows 3.11. This is just the point at which they stop pumping copies out to market. Ten years from now, there will still be copies of OEM XP floating around for less than what you make before lunch. You are majoring in the minors...

Exactly. SSDs have their place. They are now and will always be more expensive than mechanical drives. And, actually, $9 is a bit low, the going rate seems to be more like $10-12. And it looks more like $185 for 750 GB these days.

What was that? Don't think $10 is expensive? That's $10 a gigabyte, right? For $185, we get 750GB, which works out to be $0.24 a gigabyte.

And that's why mechanical hard drives remain king.

Here's how some of the specs and prices (Intels from Pricewatch) compare:

E6750:
2.66Ghz
1.30V 4MB L2
1.33Ghz FSB
~$225


E6850:
3.00Ghz
1.35V 4MB L2
1.33Ghz FSB
~$300


6400+:
3.20Ghz
1.35V 2MB L2
2.00Ghz HT
~$240


From what I've read, the E6750 actually outperforms the E6850 since it ran cooler and with less power. So it doesn't look like AMD has a whole lot to offer given the price. Not to mention it doesn't come with a heatsink and fan, something you'd probably have to dish out another $20-50 for.

Nobody wants CRTs. My company recently put out several dozen in front of the road (free/works stickers-hoping to avoid removal cost) - maybe 3 out of 50 were picked up. Took 4 days too before we decided to bring them in to recycling.

We don't live in a hitech area either. Even the low-end emachines come with LCD. The simple answer is that people no longer want half their desk taken up by a display.

I think (I'm not the purchasing manager) we got our 22" wide screen KDS at bulk discount for just under $200, they cost $244 at pricewatch lowest. They are not expensive:

http://www.pricewatch.com/monitors/

Even a 19" LCD is about $150 at the low. That is a CRT monitor that cost $250+ years back.

CRTs will be completely phased out of computer display market soon, I'd venture.

I've killed some time on this since it's a pretty interesting idea. It turns out there are plenty outside the D and F range. It does seem to like pages with a single Flash object and not much else, so that's bad. It also makes some pretty arbitrary decisions which don't mean squat to many sites. There are some sites that get enough traffic that speed is a factor but not so much that a content delivery network is really necessary, for example.

I skipped the actual link and score on sites that are pretty much just representative of the sites around them. I wanted to include them by name, though, to show where they fall. I've stuck mostly to main index pages, and I've noted where I've gone deeper.

A: Google (99%), Altavista main page (98%), Altavista Babelfish (90%) (including upon doing a translation from English to French), Craigslist (96%), Pricewatch (93%), Slackware Linux, OpenBSD, Led Zeppelin site at Atlantic (100%), supremecommander.com, w3m web browser site (96%)

B: Apache.org (87%), the lighttpd web server (84%), Google Maps, which also got a C once (84% in most cases), Perlmonks (84%), Dragonfly BSD (85%), Butthole Surfers band page (81%), 37 Signals

C: One Laptop Per Child,, ESR's homepage, the Open Source Initiative (78%), Google News (73%), Lucid CMS (74%), Perl.org (75%), lucasfilm.com, Charred Dirt game

D: gnu.org, The Register, A9 (66%), kernel.org, Akamai (64%), kuro5hin.org, freshmeat.net, linuxcd.org, Movable Type (61%), Postnuke, blogster.com, Joel on Software (67%), Fog Creek Software, metallica.com, gaspowered.com, Scorched 3D (68%), id software (64%), ISBN.nu book search

F: MS IIS (49%), microsoft.com, msn.com, linux.com, fsf.org, discovery.com, newegg.com, rackspace.com, the Simtel archive (26%), CNet Download (29%), Adobe (58%), savvis.com, mtv.com, sun.com, pclinuxos.com, freebsd.org, phpnuke.org, use.perl.org, ruby-lang.org, python.org, java.com, Rolling Stones band page (56%), powellsbooks.com, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, getfirefox.com

My site for my company (96%) gets an A (no, I'm not going to get it slashdotted) which is pretty simple but has a pic and some Javascript on it. Several sites I have done or have helped design with someone else get C or D ratings.

Back to educational use

Back to educational use

Indeed. A quick look at Pricewatch will confirm this. In terms of bang for the buck, AMD is much better. An Athlon 64 x2 3800 at 2.0 Ghz mobo combo will set you back ~$115-135, while the equivalent core 2 duo system (IMHO), a e4300 will set you back ~$155-175, at the time of this writing.

Just go buy a new one! For chrissakes, people. It's a KEYBOARD. You can find a new one for under ten bucks, easy. If you've got a half a pound of cheetos in your keys, just go get another one.

This is all about denying the customer the ability to watch TV through anything other than a cable co device, it's just paying lip service to the law so that they're not obviously in violation of it.

This is slightly OT, but I'd like to share some feedback that I just sent off to Pricewatch.com when I noticed something fishy; I wrote this about half an hour ago, and used similar language to the above when describing a sleazy business practice of one of their advertisers.

The other reason to post this is to inform others, as I've been seeing the evidence of this for a few months without realizing what was really up. So, here it is.

Recently, I've noticed that some categories don't have a lowest price listed, but I've never clicked on them.

Tonight, one of the ones I was interested in had no lowest price (500 GB SATA hard drives). Turns out that Memorylabs.com *does* have the lowest price, $99, but the item is "Currently Not Available" which is apparently why the lowest price isn't listed on the previous page; the lowest price I can purchase it for at this moment is actually $106.98 from Ascendtech Inc.

A feature request, then, would be to *not* list items that aren't available. I can't purchase it, so why should I a) waste my brainpower looking at it, and b) not be able to see the actual lowest price I can *really* purchase the item for in the "Hard drive filter" list?

There are many "Hard Drive filters" that are blank for the lowest price. Memorylabs.com accounts for about 90% of them; ComputerHQ.com has a few of them.

These companies appear to be "gaming the system" and I would not be upset if you removed them as vendors, because all they're doing is adding to the noise level, and making your site less useful. And they're attempting to set up a "memory response" in your users, since they're at the top of every list, but it feels exactly like a brick-and-mortar company advertising a sale but only having two of those items (they legitimately had a sale, so can't be sued for fraud); then, when a customer comes to the store the customer has already invested the gas and travel time, and may choose to purchase something more expensive rather than "wasting" that investment.

However, the "memory response" for this user will simply be "I will never do business with these vendors."

I've been using this site for research for as long as I can remember, at least 10 years I think, and I don't like to see the quality go downhill. Banning these vendors (and any others which are consistently at the top of the list but "sold out", which should be a fairly easy SQL query) seems like a good step to maintain quality.

Or, just modify the query so that it only returns results that *are* available. Or a combination of both, to let them know that you're on to them and this type of tomfoolery won't be tolerated.

Sincerely,
[Name and email address]

Why can't you have local stores run shops on the web?

they are making a killing on this thing

http://www.pricewatch.com/flash_card_memory/usb_fl ash_8gb.htm

Not too shabby.
Let's see what it would cost for me to build a system like that and throw on Linux instead:
Retail X2 3800+ CPU & ECS GeForce6100SM-M motherboard (onboard GF6100): $90.
2 GB Kingston PC5300 DDR2 RAM (after $40 MIR): $100.
Maxtor 160 GB Serial ATA/300 hard drive: $40.
Geforce 7600 GT video card with 256 MB RAM: $110.
Samsung 18X DVD-RW: $30.
Apevia X-QPack-NW-AL MicroATX case with 420W power supply (after shipping & $10 MIR): $86.
Total: $556 plus tax, $607 total after $50 MIRs.

I guess the extra $93 is the Microsoft tax. Of course the system I describe comes with twice as much RAM and good quality onboard graphics for those wanting Xinerama Beryl dual-monitor goodness, plus a slick little case, probably much smaller and handier than what you ended up with. Since I'm not a gamer I'd save a little money and stick with the onboard graphics or maybe add a Geforce 6100 for $40 instead if I wanted dual monitors.

Hm, based on the cheapest (without rebates) memory available at $8.50/GB, figure 20% markup between the manf and retailer, thats $6.8/GB.

$435 for memory

+10% for R&D
+10% for manf (including controller, parts, etc)
-10% for manf efficency when producing 64GB/run

COST $479

RETAIL:
+20% for geewhiz-newtoy-factor/supply shortages
+10% for retail

YOUR COST: $630

sources:
http://www.pricewatch.com/flash_card_memory/secure _digital_2gb.htm

Another prediction: SSDs will offer such huge power and performance advantanges, they will sell like crazy and drop in price by a factor of 70% within 1 year from now.

I'd honestly like to know either where you get your drives or what you're smoking that you can say a 300gb drive before rebates is typically $80... even pricewatch doesn't quote them that low.

TOTAL $499

$150 - Processor & MB Intel e4300 CPU + ECS P4M800Pro-M V2 motherboard
# 5125376 http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid= 62095&t=434717

$54 - Memory 512MB
http://www.pricewatch.com/memory/pc2-6400_ddr2-800 _512mb.htm

FREE - Maxtor 100GB ATA/133 Internal Hard Drive FAR PM/AR @ OD
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid= 15447&t=385573&highlight=hard+drive+FAR

FREE - DVD,Case,PSU,KB,Mouse Free after rebate all the time at slickdeals.net

$295 - Dell GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB DDR3 PCI E
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid= 15447&t=384302&highlight=8800

TOTAL $499

you can even cheaper if you want to downgrade the memory.

Well, I am VERY tempted to acquire a 360 at this point. But I'm waiting for a bigger HDD to be included. Even if it never happens. 20GB is somewhat ludicrous. Take a quick look at the pricewatch page for notebook drives. About half the price of the 360 drive and 4 times the storage! That's still a very nice markup for MS on accessories.

laptop...you have to buy a prebuilt one from a manufacturer, most of which are going to include Windows.

The only real competitive advantage discs (optical or magnetic) have is cost.

Slow, low density optical discs are good for offline storage, up to 4.7GB at about $0.042:GB. Plus about $1000 for a 400-disc changer jukebox makes about $0.60:GB across all jukebox loads, theoretically also automatable across many loads, for "nearline" storage.

Fast, high denisty magnetic discs are good for online storage, the kind we use as "permanent" without worrying about dealing with them directly (until they fail). They cost about $0.23:GB.

Flash currently costs about $14.00:GB. Obviously archive or real longterm storage isn't threatened right now, except in mobile devices (not just portables with biggish/hottish HDs).

But really mobile devices will have just storage of secrets (keys), pointers (URLs), wireless network interfaces (or HW jacks for the paranoid), and auth UIs (like thumbprint or other biometrics, and maybe still passwords). Because generic computing/comm devices will be everywhere, immersed in wireless networks. Discs have to rotate inside something, but why carry that everywhere, especially when it's fragile? And large capacity is unnecessary in personal tokens, with other tech distributed around the Net.

So while solid state storage is becoming cheaper, the infrastructure that makes it really cheap and easy is growing even faster. By the time a personal token costs $1:GB, it will include wireless/auth interfaces to a ubiquitous wireless Net. And maybe all those spinning discs will go the way of tape: specialized apps that require extreme density, and specialists to operate them.

The only real competitive advantage discs (optical or magnetic) have is cost.

Slow, low density optical discs are good for offline storage, up to 4.7GB at about $0.042:GB. Plus about $1000 for a 400-disc changer jukebox makes about $0.60:GB across all jukebox loads, theoretically also automatable across many loads, for "nearline" storage.

Fast, high denisty magnetic discs are good for online storage, the kind we use as "permanent" without worrying about dealing with them directly (until they fail). They cost about $0.23:GB.

Flash currently costs about $14.00:GB. Obviously archive or real longterm storage isn't threatened right now, except in mobile devices (not just portables with biggish/hottish HDs).

But really mobile devices will have just storage of secrets (keys), pointers (URLs), wireless network interfaces (or HW jacks for the paranoid), and auth UIs (like thumbprint or other biometrics, and maybe still passwords). Because generic computing/comm devices will be everywhere, immersed in wireless networks. Discs have to rotate inside something, but why carry that everywhere, especially when it's fragile? And large capacity is unnecessary in personal tokens, with other tech distributed around the Net.

So while solid state storage is becoming cheaper, the infrastructure that makes it really cheap and easy is growing even faster. By the time a personal token costs $1:GB, it will include wireless/auth interfaces to a ubiquitous wireless Net. And maybe all those spinning discs will go the way of tape: specialized apps that require extreme density, and specialists to operate them.

The only real competitive advantage discs (optical or magnetic) have is cost.

Slow, low density optical discs are good for offline storage, up to 4.7GB at about $0.042:GB. Plus about $1000 for a 400-disc changer jukebox makes about $0.60:GB across all jukebox loads, theoretically also automatable across many loads, for "nearline" storage.

Fast, high denisty magnetic discs are good for online storage, the kind we use as "permanent" without worrying about dealing with them directly (until they fail). They cost about $0.23:GB.

Flash currently costs about $14.00:GB. Obviously archive or real longterm storage isn't threatened right now, except in mobile devices (not just portables with biggish/hottish HDs).

But really mobile devices will have just storage of secrets (keys), pointers (URLs), wireless network interfaces (or HW jacks for the paranoid), and auth UIs (like thumbprint or other biometrics, and maybe still passwords). Because generic computing/comm devices will be everywhere, immersed in wireless networks. Discs have to rotate inside something, but why carry that everywhere, especially when it's fragile? And large capacity is unnecessary in personal tokens, with other tech distributed around the Net.

So while solid state storage is becoming cheaper, the infrastructure that makes it really cheap and easy is growing even faster. By the time a personal token costs $1:GB, it will include wireless/auth interfaces to a ubiquitous wireless Net. And maybe all those spinning discs will go the way of tape: specialized apps that require extreme density, and specialists to operate them.

$1300 cheaper than $2499? That's about $1200!
I looked around some and found that it cost about $1400 just to get a pair of the Xeon 5150 CPUs with no computer!

My strategy generally is to use a file for swap rather than a partition, even in linux.

What I find curious is that you have a strategy. On what relevant experience do you base this strategy? 1 GB of disk space costs less than $0.50. Set up 3 GB of VM if it makes you feel good. The latte you drink while you set it up costs more than the extra disk space!

So go for it!!! Who cares what you do? Heck, give yourself 10x the RAM and see if it actually makes any difference!!! (it won't)

This is sort of like asking: "Which goes faster: the yellow Pacer or the red Pacer?"!

Wait a month after January 30, 2007 and visit Pricewatch for the OEM versions, I'll be needing to buy more memory and possibly a new motherboard and CPU anyway to run Vista. My laptop would need a memory upgrade as well, but the graphics on it do not support the new GUI features. I might keep XP on the laptop and trade it in for a new laptop with Vista pre-installed on it after a year or two after Vista comes out when they start making good deals and trade-in offers.

Ebay in its early days was a wonderful experience. It ushered in an unprecedented, powerful, and exciting service: The 24/7 world-wide electronic garage sale. Suddenly, that unusual antique lampshade or rare DVD box set was just a bid away. That's how I viewed Ebay, an internet bazaar of bargains from the closet and hard to find items.

Then the power sellers set up shop, and now the results of your search for a 1950's era toaster were suddenly clutterred with 240 identical auctions for "high speed DSL". Ebay has a long way to go to restore sanity to its marketplace and improve buyer confidence. Here's two suggestions:

1) Allow buyers to filter out power sellers. For example, "Click here to limit your search to sellers with less than five items currently up for auction on Ebay."

2) Require all auctions to include shipping costs and other hidden charges in the current bidding price (like http://pricewatch.com/) . You pay exactly what you bid. No surprise exorbitant shipping fees.

The thing is, in that P2P fantasy world where everyone shares their connection and gives back to the community and there are no evil corporations charging us monthly fees, major latency would be the norm and the internet would become much more regionalised than it is now. Online gaming, for example, would all but die, surviving only in tightnit local groups.

The march of technology makes the cost of providing N bandwidth drop every year, following a near exponential curve. Following this trend, it's easy to see how the cost of providing bandwidth drops to the point where individuals can afford to provide quality connections that now cost thousands.

Perhaps you don't remember the day when a 128k connection cost $1,000 per month or more? Now, such bandwidth is available for under $20/month in many contexts.

That P4 under your desk probably has more comptational power than existed worldwide in 1980. Certainly true for 1970. Yet, you can replace the Mobo and chip for less than a day's wages.

Why is it unrealistic to think that long-range, cheap, P2P broadband isn't possible, yet alone likely, in just a few more decades?

A quick look at price watch confirms this. http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/ It is interesting to see the Xeon dual-core chips going up.

BTW. The grammar natzi that thinks I'm an illiterate AMD fanboy is right. I AM illiterate. Ignorance is bliss.

4X4 sounds more like a marketing ploy to me than like a feasible solution for Joe Average or even Joe Gamer.

Why?

Consider the cost of Athlon X2 processors:
http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/442067-1.htm
The least expensive Athlon X2 costs a cool 300 bucks, while the mid-range Core 2 Duo (Conroe) E6600 costs $315 (projected wholesale price).

Now factor in a more expensive (because of 2 processor sockets) 4X4 motherboard, two Athlon X2 chips at $300, and you wind up with a $350 to $400 surcharge for being an AMD fanboy.

The situation gets worse if you want a high-end system:
Two FX-62 will set you back $1045 + $1045 = $2090
http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/992212-1.htm
and while this combination is expected to outperform a single Core 2 Duo at $1057
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=E6800&btnG=Sea rch+Froogle&lmode=online&scoring=p
factoring in the more expensive two-socket motherboard expect to pay a cool $1100 more than for the E6800 system.

Personally, I'll probably buy an E6600 ($315) or an E6400 ($240) as soon as they become available.

4X4 sounds more like a marketing ploy to me than like a feasible solution for Joe Average or even Joe Gamer.

Why?

Consider the cost of Athlon X2 processors:
http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/442067-1.htm
The least expensive Athlon X2 costs a cool 300 bucks, while the mid-range Core 2 Duo (Conroe) E6600 costs $315 (projected wholesale price).

Now factor in a more expensive (because of 2 processor sockets) 4X4 motherboard, two Athlon X2 chips at $300, and you wind up with a $350 to $400 surcharge for being an AMD fanboy.

The situation gets worse if you want a high-end system:
Two FX-62 will set you back $1045 + $1045 = $2090
http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/992212-1.htm
and while this combination is expected to outperform a single Core 2 Duo at $1057
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=E6800&btnG=Sea rch+Froogle&lmode=online&scoring=p
factoring in the more expensive two-socket motherboard expect to pay a cool $1100 more than for the E6800 system.

Personally, I'll probably buy an E6600 ($315) or an E6400 ($240) as soon as they become available.

That's one word for PHP-GTK, here's another, "slow". You could have learned lua and another widget set in a man month and your users would thank you from the bottom of their RAM usage.

Slow, perhaps, if you are writing a video game, or a performance-intensive app. We're doing neither. We provide software to administer schools - grades, credits. and the like. For which PHP-GTK does just fine.

We don't have many complaints about performance, even though the average use consists of a database of a few hundred MB. We list our minimum specs as PII/PIII at 500 Mhz or better, 128 MB RAM, 256 recommended. 256 MB of RAM runs about $15 on the open market. Computers exceeding these specs can be had on EBay for less than $100.

What users are these that will thank me, again?

As far as learning another toolkit, what about porting over the existing application, now having several man-years of invested time?

I assume you're going to school for computer science ... if so ... you NEED your own Linux box in order to do experimenting, learn new things, perform research, etc. You can get a Barebones box off pricewatch for literally $200 or so (so I'm sure you can afford this ... credit card if anything). Then go to any other student in the computer science department ... ask for a linux distro cd (ubuntu, debian, etc.) ... and odds are they'd jump all over it ... they'd probably even come over to your dorm room and install it for you (that's just what they like to do). Then boom, you're all set ... enjoy working from your dorm room ... and stay out of those public labs.

Give up cartriges? They did, see the Gamecube. Those are discs. As far as portable goes, mechanical media is a joke. Load times on handhelds are a huge detractor from the product. Think about it, you're on the go. The last thing you want 4 minutes out of your 15 minute brake consumed by load times. Then there's the battery life. I don't know about you, but I really enjoy the fact that I can play my DS for a week or two without worrying about charging it. I just close it and go back to my game later (I know the PSP also has a sleep mode). Size isn't a big deal anymore either. With screens that small, textures don't need to be nearly as detailed, and flash memory keeps getting cheaper and cheaper. Check out Pricewatch. Some formats have 512MB of flash for under 25 bucks.

DDR2-800 is not generally available to the retail world.

http://www.pricewatch.com/memory/845489-1.htm

If Intel really wanted a benchmark they should ask AMD for engineering samples of next year's cores and they could pit them together.

ring...ring...ring...
AMD: Hello?
Intel: Hello, AMD?
AMD: Yes?
Intel: Intel here. We've had to cut back on our industrial espionage budget this year, seems we've had an unexpected revenue shortfall and can't afford that group any more
AMD: Have you considered outsourcing it to India?
Intel: Well, no, not really. We were hoping you could just send us some samples of your lab prototypes.
AMD: Sure, sure, say no more. We'll send those over right away via courier. You'll have them on your desk first thing in the morning.

Somehow, I just don't see that happening...

I haven't seen much of a change in the retail market. http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/ I do think it is ironic that AMD is beating Intel to the market with new processors. Considering just before the K8 came out Intel made the statement to the effect "AMD has never done anything but copy our designs".

http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/992016-1.htm vs. http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/992208-1.htm