Slashdot Mirror

Sexy LCD 17" Monitors - Part I

Comparison of 17" LCDs: The Heavyweights Enter The Ring - Part II
Cheers

Recently got a Belnea (Euro only I think?) 10 15 37 for my parents new workstation (for behind the Bar, when it gets quiet the computer comes in handy), and it is great... especially with the limited surface space we have. The original version of this monitor was reviewed on Toms Hardware, but the casing was cheap and nasty. Fortunately they heeded the reviews and there have been two revisions of the monitor, for a great price of £255 ex vat,

I did try the monitor with Unreal 2003, but the ghosting started making me feel sick after 10 minutes of play... but I'm not the primary user, and the only games played on it by my parents usually involve cards (as well as internet and e-mails)!

What is the power coefficient? There is a graph with this heading on page 7 but absolutely NO explanation ... not even the usual two line benchmark comments ;) The values range from 6% to 117% and the power supplies that seem to be better have higher scores ... but the graph doesn't even have a comment along the lines of 'higher is better'

Well, unfortunately I can't find the original thread on arstechnica (their archive search is broken). However, here's basically what happened:

Back in September, THG posted this article with the title "Hot Contraband: P4 With 3.6 GHz" and the description "For this exclusive report, THG tested CPUs of the future, bringing you benchmarks for P4s in the 3.6 GHz, 3.33 GHz and 3.06 GHz variations."

In my mind, at least, this text implies that they managed to snag some unreleased P4 chips from Intel by one way or another and benchmarked them.

However, people on several websites noticed that the shots of the BIOS screen and the photo of the chip in question looked suspicious. They were actually from much slower chips, but with the numbers arranged so that they appeared to be from 3GHz+ CPUs. The shot of the CPU on the first page, for example, that has "PC3.3G0K" in the serial number was analyzed to show that the 3s were identical, and therefore at least one of them was copied over the original number in Photoshop.

Also, suspiciously, there was no testing of the hyperthreading that will be present in released P4s that are that fast.

Eventually, THG posted an acknowledgment of the issue, but it seems kind of hollow. For one thing, the shots they show of their super-unlocked P4 are not the same chip as on the first page. For another, they admit they're using current P4 technology. So basically what the article is about is not "Here is what the 3.6GHz P4s will be like," but "Here is what *today's* P4s are like if they are overclocked to 3.6GHz." None of the benchmarks apply to the real world unless you are going to use a liquid nitrogen (or however they managed such high clockspeeds) cooling system on a current P4 instead of waiting for the real 3.6GHz models with hyperthreading.

They *could* have been honest about it and called the article "THG overclocks a P4 to 3.6GHz!" like they've done in the past, but apparently that wasn't sensationalistic enough for them. If that weren't bad enough, they waited until a ton of people called them on their deception to admit what they'd done.

Ironically, this happened only a few weeks after Tom himself wrote an editorial about some unethical former writers for his site.

Well, unfortunately I can't find the original thread on arstechnica (their archive search is broken). However, here's basically what happened:

Back in September, THG posted this article with the title "Hot Contraband: P4 With 3.6 GHz" and the description "For this exclusive report, THG tested CPUs of the future, bringing you benchmarks for P4s in the 3.6 GHz, 3.33 GHz and 3.06 GHz variations."

In my mind, at least, this text implies that they managed to snag some unreleased P4 chips from Intel by one way or another and benchmarked them.

However, people on several websites noticed that the shots of the BIOS screen and the photo of the chip in question looked suspicious. They were actually from much slower chips, but with the numbers arranged so that they appeared to be from 3GHz+ CPUs. The shot of the CPU on the first page, for example, that has "PC3.3G0K" in the serial number was analyzed to show that the 3s were identical, and therefore at least one of them was copied over the original number in Photoshop.

Also, suspiciously, there was no testing of the hyperthreading that will be present in released P4s that are that fast.

Eventually, THG posted an acknowledgment of the issue, but it seems kind of hollow. For one thing, the shots they show of their super-unlocked P4 are not the same chip as on the first page. For another, they admit they're using current P4 technology. So basically what the article is about is not "Here is what the 3.6GHz P4s will be like," but "Here is what *today's* P4s are like if they are overclocked to 3.6GHz." None of the benchmarks apply to the real world unless you are going to use a liquid nitrogen (or however they managed such high clockspeeds) cooling system on a current P4 instead of waiting for the real 3.6GHz models with hyperthreading.

They *could* have been honest about it and called the article "THG overclocks a P4 to 3.6GHz!" like they've done in the past, but apparently that wasn't sensationalistic enough for them. If that weren't bad enough, they waited until a ton of people called them on their deception to admit what they'd done.

Ironically, this happened only a few weeks after Tom himself wrote an editorial about some unethical former writers for his site.

Symbolic representation - Power supplies might not catch fire, but you can certainly burn them out.

While at Tom's site, check out this fantastic article entitled Western Digital WD1200JB
Outperforms SCSI Drives. Of course, the article provides no evidence to support the claim.

Hardly.

Were you around when the AMD K7 was release? If so, you would remember, and I quote:
August 18, 1999 As a matter of fact, there's only a minority of motherboard manufacturers that are actually offering Athlon-platforms right now, the minority is either quiet, or even announcing that they will not produce Athlon-motherboards for rather cheesy reasons.
Or,
August 23, 1999
Now we should hope that finally more motherboard makers will supply Athlon-boards soon, so that those powerful but lonely AMD-chips can finally find a new home in computer systems.
Or,
November 10, 1999
A person must look extremely hard on most of these manufacturers website's to find any literature or promotion for their Athlon supported motherboards.
And then,
December 8, 1999
I believe we will start seeing Athlon's motherboard support grow.
And finally, the first chipset NOT based on the AMD 750 Reference Chipset,
Februrary 4, 2000

AMD's Athlon is currently still damned to run on platforms using the one-and-only Athlon chipset 'Irongate', also manufactured by AMD. This chipset was initially still good enough to compete against all Intel processors on any platform, but it was already pretty outdated when it came to market.

AMD got burned last time, and is (rightfully so) doing what it can to keep it from happening again.

With thanks to Tom's Hardware...

Hardly.

Were you around when the AMD K7 was release? If so, you would remember, and I quote:
August 18, 1999 As a matter of fact, there's only a minority of motherboard manufacturers that are actually offering Athlon-platforms right now, the minority is either quiet, or even announcing that they will not produce Athlon-motherboards for rather cheesy reasons.
Or,
August 23, 1999
Now we should hope that finally more motherboard makers will supply Athlon-boards soon, so that those powerful but lonely AMD-chips can finally find a new home in computer systems.
Or,
November 10, 1999
A person must look extremely hard on most of these manufacturers website's to find any literature or promotion for their Athlon supported motherboards.
And then,
December 8, 1999
I believe we will start seeing Athlon's motherboard support grow.
And finally, the first chipset NOT based on the AMD 750 Reference Chipset,
Februrary 4, 2000

AMD's Athlon is currently still damned to run on platforms using the one-and-only Athlon chipset 'Irongate', also manufactured by AMD. This chipset was initially still good enough to compete against all Intel processors on any platform, but it was already pretty outdated when it came to market.

AMD got burned last time, and is (rightfully so) doing what it can to keep it from happening again.

With thanks to Tom's Hardware...

Hardly.

Were you around when the AMD K7 was release? If so, you would remember, and I quote:
August 18, 1999 As a matter of fact, there's only a minority of motherboard manufacturers that are actually offering Athlon-platforms right now, the minority is either quiet, or even announcing that they will not produce Athlon-motherboards for rather cheesy reasons.
Or,
August 23, 1999
Now we should hope that finally more motherboard makers will supply Athlon-boards soon, so that those powerful but lonely AMD-chips can finally find a new home in computer systems.
Or,
November 10, 1999
A person must look extremely hard on most of these manufacturers website's to find any literature or promotion for their Athlon supported motherboards.
And then,
December 8, 1999
I believe we will start seeing Athlon's motherboard support grow.
And finally, the first chipset NOT based on the AMD 750 Reference Chipset,
Februrary 4, 2000

AMD's Athlon is currently still damned to run on platforms using the one-and-only Athlon chipset 'Irongate', also manufactured by AMD. This chipset was initially still good enough to compete against all Intel processors on any platform, but it was already pretty outdated when it came to market.

AMD got burned last time, and is (rightfully so) doing what it can to keep it from happening again.

With thanks to Tom's Hardware...

Hardly.

Were you around when the AMD K7 was release? If so, you would remember, and I quote:
August 18, 1999 As a matter of fact, there's only a minority of motherboard manufacturers that are actually offering Athlon-platforms right now, the minority is either quiet, or even announcing that they will not produce Athlon-motherboards for rather cheesy reasons.
Or,
August 23, 1999
Now we should hope that finally more motherboard makers will supply Athlon-boards soon, so that those powerful but lonely AMD-chips can finally find a new home in computer systems.
Or,
November 10, 1999
A person must look extremely hard on most of these manufacturers website's to find any literature or promotion for their Athlon supported motherboards.
And then,
December 8, 1999
I believe we will start seeing Athlon's motherboard support grow.
And finally, the first chipset NOT based on the AMD 750 Reference Chipset,
Februrary 4, 2000

AMD's Athlon is currently still damned to run on platforms using the one-and-only Athlon chipset 'Irongate', also manufactured by AMD. This chipset was initially still good enough to compete against all Intel processors on any platform, but it was already pretty outdated when it came to market.

AMD got burned last time, and is (rightfully so) doing what it can to keep it from happening again.

With thanks to Tom's Hardware...

Hardly.

Were you around when the AMD K7 was release? If so, you would remember, and I quote:
August 18, 1999 As a matter of fact, there's only a minority of motherboard manufacturers that are actually offering Athlon-platforms right now, the minority is either quiet, or even announcing that they will not produce Athlon-motherboards for rather cheesy reasons.
Or,
August 23, 1999
Now we should hope that finally more motherboard makers will supply Athlon-boards soon, so that those powerful but lonely AMD-chips can finally find a new home in computer systems.
Or,
November 10, 1999
A person must look extremely hard on most of these manufacturers website's to find any literature or promotion for their Athlon supported motherboards.
And then,
December 8, 1999
I believe we will start seeing Athlon's motherboard support grow.
And finally, the first chipset NOT based on the AMD 750 Reference Chipset,
Februrary 4, 2000

AMD's Athlon is currently still damned to run on platforms using the one-and-only Athlon chipset 'Irongate', also manufactured by AMD. This chipset was initially still good enough to compete against all Intel processors on any platform, but it was already pretty outdated when it came to market.

AMD got burned last time, and is (rightfully so) doing what it can to keep it from happening again.

With thanks to Tom's Hardware...

Hardly.

Were you around when the AMD K7 was release? If so, you would remember, and I quote:
August 18, 1999 As a matter of fact, there's only a minority of motherboard manufacturers that are actually offering Athlon-platforms right now, the minority is either quiet, or even announcing that they will not produce Athlon-motherboards for rather cheesy reasons.
Or,
August 23, 1999
Now we should hope that finally more motherboard makers will supply Athlon-boards soon, so that those powerful but lonely AMD-chips can finally find a new home in computer systems.
Or,
November 10, 1999
A person must look extremely hard on most of these manufacturers website's to find any literature or promotion for their Athlon supported motherboards.
And then,
December 8, 1999
I believe we will start seeing Athlon's motherboard support grow.
And finally, the first chipset NOT based on the AMD 750 Reference Chipset,
Februrary 4, 2000

AMD's Athlon is currently still damned to run on platforms using the one-and-only Athlon chipset 'Irongate', also manufactured by AMD. This chipset was initially still good enough to compete against all Intel processors on any platform, but it was already pretty outdated when it came to market.

AMD got burned last time, and is (rightfully so) doing what it can to keep it from happening again.

With thanks to Tom's Hardware...

I fail to see your point. You received 20 Samsung drives, the origin of which you don't know anything, and 100% of them failed, so all Samsung drives must be crap? Have you ever thought of shipping damage? And the fact that you obtained them fraudulently doesn't exactly increase your credibility.

I had no idea. While I read Anandtech, Timshardware, and BugTraq for hardware-related technical or security news, what would the Slashdot crew consider a "good" news source? Slashdot, of course, being a metanews site--where would one read daily to be informed and educated about general issues, such as gaming?

Anotherng that will hold the iPod is it's exclisive Macintosh support.

There's an iPod version made specifically for Windows--three of them actually. With a FAT32 file system, Musicmatch 7.1 for access, and even a 6-pin-to-4-pin adapter for the firewire cable.

http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/02q4/021003/ind ex.html

I guess not.

" Plug-in for PC cards (PCMCIA): the slot is on the top."

You're right about the networking and most of the rest. I'd love to have this as a box in front of my TV, using only USB, powered firewire, 100Mbps networking, and DVI/Svideo.

www4.tomshardware.com seems to be working just fine.

anybody have the modchip out for this console yet?

oh wait...

That's a comparison of Windows vs native Linux. Here's the results of Windows vs WineX.
Click here

Hmmm... Your right. Guess that we shouldn't pay attention to THIS

Or THIS

Also, my results in RTCWolf (and other "ports") with a Kyro 2 are MUCH faster than under Windows. Perhaps you need to do a bit more research before you post lies about something that was only true two years ago, when Linux video card drivers and APIs were really immature.

To slighty paraphrase you: So, your post is nice, but it is really just there to appease Windows zealots.

Uh, right:

Click here

• Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
  
• Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
  
• Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.
  

• Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
• Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
• Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!
  

• Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
• Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
• Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.

• Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
• Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
• Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/02q3/020820/inde x.html

How To Assemble The Ultimate Toolbox

Summary:
Finding the correct tool for the job can sometimes be a chore. We look at some of the tools that should be in the Ultimate Toolbox and take a look at some ideas on what goes into having the right tool for the right job.

Dude! He did his own tests on the chips. He watched them fail. He videotaped it! I watched them fail too! Read about it here. It doesn't matter if it makes sense or not, it happened. And unless he's flat-out lying, he called the motherboard manufacturer and they told him that the diode could only handle a 1 C/s increase. This could well be false (probably is, even, since I believe the motherboard has to implement the heat-protection circuitry itself, which in my opinion is a misjudgment on AMD's part), but it's not Tom's mistake.

Maybe it was a flaw in the motherboard's heat-protection circuitry, rather than a flaw in the thermal diode. Maybe it's a combination of things. But how the hell was Tom supposed to know the ultimate cause? He did a test and reported what happened. Or do you think he made everything up?

Toms Hardware did a review a couple of months ago... a good read, I was thinking about getting it, but now I'm redoing my music in OGG so we'll just have to wait until more hardware players get in on the act and support OGG.

Toms Hardware did a review a couple of months ago... a good read, I was thinking about getting it, but now I'm redoing my music in OGG so we'll just have to wait until more hardware players get in on the act and support OGG.

True, you might not find 5.1 sound or AGP8x/GeForce4 4400 performance,

Okay I have no clue what I'm talking about here but my guess is that an integrated GPU would have pretty fast communications with the rest of the motherboard, afterall I think they share the system RAM, this could well be faster than AGP8x, which currently does next to nothing according to Tom's Hardware Guide is basically a marketing feature anyhow.

everybody wants to talk to a guineapig, but no one wants to be one

Tom's Hardware Guide and similar sites get paid by their advertisers to be a guinea pig.

This is what I am waiting for hot-swapable, plug and play Serial ATA.

This has been in the workls for a long time, but there are some actual products coming to market this year.

Tom's has a good story. Serial ATA

The features in brief:

150 MByte/s maximum transfer rate (300/600 MByte/s envisioned for the future)
Hot-plugging capability
Two power saving modes: partial and slumber
Overlapping (commands)
Tagged command queueing
Seven-wire data cable. Connectors measure just 8 mm wide.

You sure about 100W? - a P-IV 2GHz consumes 75W by itself - a single HD consumes 12W when idle see Tom's hardware for reference. The motherboard is not innocuous and neither are the RAM or the video card. You don't have to run 3D for the GPU to run hot. Then there's all these fans. My guess it that the computer probably consumes at least 150W when running 100% CPU without disk access with recent CPUs from either Intel or AMD. Now I need to read out on switching PSU like you say. What is their efficiency? They seem to require cooling as well (fans) so it can't be 100%. To me 200-250W seems very reasonable as a consumption starting point when running S@H. Certainly recent PCs are quite good at heating a living room. And even if you are right (100W) that's still over $100/y, not an altogether negligible sum. Maybe you can laugh about it but I don't.

The articles I looked at on the relative performance were these:

mobilecomputing

toms hardware

Blue's News

It's not quite as popular as /., but it's a pretty widely respected gaming news site.

As Blue's tagline says: "Established 1995. Over an eighth of a billion visitors since 1997."

AnandTech and Tom's Hardware are also up there.

Frankly, a lot of sites have been around since 1997. Find some non-university/corporate sites that have been around for 10 years with (relatively) high hit counts and it's more meaningful.

With a 50% increase in clock speed, overclocking was well worth it. Even when I spent almost as much on my cooling solution as I did on the processor ($55 for former, $65 for latter). It let me build a system I was happy with for 2+ years at an unbeatable price.

Later, I went to a 800MHz Celeron. Just as I was considering pushing it to a 1.8GHz Celeron through an upgradeware upgrade, a fellow LANner managed to snap two capacitors off my motherboard and fry the whole box. (Don't ask how - and no, he's not going to pony up).

I just didn't see the point in upgrading my box except with processor b/c I was maxed with 1GB of RAM and the box performed (almost) flawlessly. Need ATA-133, pop in a card. Yeah, I only had AGP 2x, but I held my own fraggin' with a low-end GeForce2. If it hadn't been for the accident, I wouldn't have upgraded.

Now I'm the proud owner of a Shuttle SS51G-based system. With a DVD-burner, a smokin' WD 120GB drive, and a GeForce4 Ti 4600 w/VIVO. I wanted to wait for the Athlon/nForce2 based systems to come out in October, but I had a dead box and couldn't really wait. Being an old-school overclocker, I decided to see how far the CPU would go:

I started with a stock 2.4GHz rev B Pentium 4 and cranked it up to 2.52GHz. Went a tad higher, but had to clear CMOS and start over. When I benchmarked the system at different speeds, there was negligible difference. Why make the extra heat? Bah.

My system absolutely smokes. I'm extremely happy and if current trends continue, I won't feel the need to replace this box for another 3-4 years. And the size is perfect for toting to LAN parties. Now I just need a sweet LCD monitor without tracies....

But Tom's Hardware had an article reviewing a 3d LCD display back in May of 2001.

And I'm going to vote on the whole "it's crap' side. I don't want to be forced to sit in one spot for it -- so, I won't buy it. Still, it's cool that it's being produced.


Well, anyway, it is news in that it, um, is slightly different. But it's hardly revolutionary.

3D shutter glasses are fairly cheap now, and work better, and hell buy two and two people can watch in 3d!

http://www4.tomshardware.com/display/01q2/010516/3 dlcd-01.html

Also here

It's everywhere!

It hit 1GHz back in June

Tom's Hardware

it's in the third paragraph here

While GeForce4 Ti is the pinnacle of today's mainstream 3D chip technology, GeForce4 MX is a mere advance of GeForce2 MX technology. GeForce4 MX does not contain any nfiniteFX-engine and, therefore, no full DirectX 8.x functionality, either.

Although, there are benchmarks further down that show the higher end MX's compeating with the GeForce3.

Funny, you've been asked twice now and declined to provide links.

Here's mine:

FreeBSD Driver Initative
Announcement of collaboration between NVIDIA, SGI, and VA Linux
NVIDIA press release
And another release
Tom's Hardware discussion

Oh, and SGI isn't the only proprietary code either. There's also a cross licensing agreement with S3 for the S3TC (S3 Texture Compression) algorithms that NVIDIA doesn't have the right to disclose.

NVIDIA and SGI drop lawsuits

Some of use use these nify things called batteries. A lithium ion battery on one of those puppies and a transmitter make them cool.

The axis one runs linux. Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of those?

Have a look at the Shuttle Mini PC. Toms hardware have an in depth review. There is a NIC on board, as well as USB, firewire, video, sound, etc. It can also accept 1 PCI card (second NIC), a hard drive, floppy, and CD-Rom (or other 5.25" drive).

See it at Toms

Well worth a look.

"Basically UT2k3 is very cpu dependant unlike quakeIII"

QuakeIII *is* mostly CPU dependant, at least, according to these guys it is.

Ok, Well after reading the first hundred or so posts I've realized that most of you are strokeing your ego's and not awnsering the man's question!

Now, Simply put here are some sites that contain a lot of information to digest.
Tom's Hardware
AnandTech

Now here is a list of components to pick, and please do your self a favour and do some resarch before hand, get some do's and dont's and faq's stuck in your skull before spending any hard earned dough.

BTW I build systems on the side for the not so techniclly apt (as I'm sure many /. readers do for friends and family!).

Heres your shopping list
1. CASE w/PS (at least 350W ATX and a size you could "Grow" into)
2. Mother Board (Think long and hard about this one as it is a more important choice than even your CPU or RAM). Personal recomendations include ECS, MSI, Asus, and if you like spending money Tyan. Not to mention Gigabyte, Abit and shuttle, however if you visit the both tom's and anands they will have all the links for you with recent information and benchmarks. 3. CPU (what ever you want to spend on this will directly determine the capabilities of your system hence money=power!)
4. Ram (your options are limited by the capablilties of your motherboard.).
5. Video (again do you play video games or do you simply fart around in office all day and surf the net?). And if you play video games how much power do you need (can you afford to spend upwards of $400 on a card?).
6. Sound (Are you a musicaian, do you want home-theatre quality or is the AC'97 on the motherboard good enough for you?).
7. Optical devices (DVD, CD-ROM, CDRW, DVDRW?) again functionality direclty determined by price. DVDRW drives cost roughly $300 - $500 and the media is $4 to $8 per (and when you screw up they make expensive coasters). On the other hand I pay about 12 cents us per blank CD-R. (I purchase bulk!).
8. Storage (again price determins functionality). all drives now start at around 40GB and cost about $70 to $150.

9. Printing/Scaning (do you need a multifunction device to deal with the "real" paper world?).

10. Lastly but definitly most important! Connectivity! Will you get DSL? Do you already have a DOCSIS compliant cable provider in your area? or are you stuck with a measly little 56K modem? (I'm sorry I'm biased by my Canauk 3.5MB/s DSL.) The choice is simple if you get a modem stick with USRobitics or GVC. (both have lifetime warrenties). If you get a NIC (Network Interface Card), then you may consider weather or not you'll use the added features of a $50 3Com or weather or not a $10 Realtek will do?

Now you have a lot of foot work to do, quotes are a bitch! I only say that haveing worked in a computer store sales environment. They take time effort and forethought. You will get out of it what you put into it. If you simply think "Ok I'll get one of those dell's or compaq's and add what I need as I go!" well then you will be stuck with whatever decisions you make. Keep in mind computer parts depreceate faster than Ford Pinto's! So if you maintain a steady investment then you will have great preformance at price point that would make any scrouge druel. Stay away from used hardware unles it has a warrenty! Refurbished monitors are a huge saveings and have a one year warrenty. Realisticly you should simply say "This is my budget and this is what I need!" If you know what your doing (after all that reading!) then you'll get a killer deal. If you like you can even email me and I'll send you a quote .

A note to the rest of you /.'ers my first computoy was a crappy zenith vic clone that turned up the daisy's to a cup of tea across the keyboard. Peek and Poke are KEWL! The second system I used was a MICOM (Text ONLY! muahahah in beautiful PUKE ORANGE!), and the first color system I ever touched was a comodore 128 (with a whopping 128K). The first system I purchased (I will never buy a name brand again!) was a crappy AST (no they don't exist anymore!) and the first system I built was a 386SX, followed by a K6 266 and then an Abit BP-6 (man $70/processor and there are 2). Now I run a dual Athalon setup (Yes I render stuff and cant work without multitasking). My older computing geek friends tell me of the 'days of yore' when your 'codeing tools' consisted of a hole punch and bristol board cut to the right size, analog computers, and the first IBM/Amdhal S360's that in thier old age required physical battery to operate properly.

If it can help someone: Some hints on Tom's Hardware

...and for those of you who want real HOWTOs, guides, etc., to make your own Lego-man picture essay, check these out:

here,
here,
here,
here, and
here

...and for those of you who want real HOWTOs, guides, etc., to make your own Lego-man picture essay, check these out:

here,
here,
here,
here, and
here

.. and hook up the video card.

I have a 1800 Althon system with the GeForce 4200 card that runs like a top with XP.

Although Intel would have you believe that the P4 is what makes the net "come alive", it's really your graphics card and internet connection.

As a previous poster stated, get a good case from newegg.com

I recently built my system, spending ~700 bucks and had no problems with any of the parts I purchased from them. As always, check the guides at tom's hardware, sharkyextreme, anandtech.com

Good luck and remmeber not to run on the carpet before you build it together. Personally, I never had a problem with static electricity except for one time I touched the bottom of HD and fried it. Good thing it was a work computer though :-P

Does anyone have any information on building a PC from scratch?

TomsHardware.com recently ran an article (with pictures) on how to build a PC yourself. It's really quite simple though. I have an abnormal fear of tools yet I've been building my own computers for 10 years. If you can install your own video card, you can build a computer.

If you're in the market for a new AMD motherboard, perhaps you should wait and see how the new VIA KT400

Well some of these boards have been tested. According to this article on Toms Hardware the KT400 boards aren't worth it. Interesting benchmarks, that is for sure.