What Would You Do???2

Another question from what would you do your host not_4(.SALE.)10 todays question.....

With technology upgrading and expanding everyday it's sometimes hard to keep up with knowing that our finance isn't as good and borrowing money from your mother at age 27 is pretty pathetic now a days.

REFLECT>
micrsoft is in the middle of developing it's new system Microsoft Vista, 98 should well be gone by then.... the future is eering closer. How do you plan technology you will own? What shall you do about it? how will you keep up with it? and even so what do you think will happen to your knowledge and love of technology? I say 4D and mp4 is in know put these questions as you own.(in your own words)

Thoughts if you please...........

trying to keep on the cutting edge of technology is an expensive propostion and is not the least bit cost effective. Today's 499.00 state of the art video card is 299.00 six months from now and in a year is only as powerful as new mainstream cards. ( or if you are real unlucky is only entry level capable compared to the latest cards.)

The only sensible upgrade plan is to stay 2-3 steps behind the "cutting edge" you sacrifice very little performance and save a whole lot of money.

Windows Vista? "yawn", wake me up when they release the first service pack for it. by then they should have the worst bugs worked out.

Well well...

This is my formula:

I buy what once was best. Today that means the x850s and gf6800gts, earlier it meant the 9800xts etc in video cards.

When it comes to cpus I buy the cheapest of the best performing family, today that means the 3000+ athlon 64 s939, earlier it was the pentium 3.0c for example.

I just buy good name brand components and do my homework(read reviews and visit forums) before I buy. All in all I dont spend quite as much as I like, until I am done with school I guess.

Something that always seem to work for me is to buy good components no matter what they are, instead of being extra cheap. For example, a good hardware modem instead of winmodems, a good sound blaster audigy, etc. Good components make your computer perfom exceptionally well even on slower cpus. Make the fast hard drive a priority, just like the cpu and video card.

And lastly, never be cheap when it comes to input and output devices. There is nothing more degrading to your computing experience than a bad mouse/keyboard or a poor monitor.

As for windows, there is absolutely no reason for me to stop using xp now. I would like Linux to get going but right now there's no way to be a pc gamer on Linux without some fancy hacks. To get good performance out of xp, set it up yourself even if you buy a name brand computer like dell.

compres