Went on a spending spree at the local Fry's today. Came back with a P4 3.2 Ghz 2GB RAM 250GB HD Radeon 9600 XT 128MB machine, all in a slick shuttle case. Now I just have to do the fun of reinstalling everything and doing data transfer... since I have around 60GB+ of data on the old machine, I think I'm going to crack the case and put the old and new HD in a single machine and do a direct copy.

Scary things... I bought a middle of the road video card, but I still spent $99 (I know, I know, ...) but even games made a year ago can max out the video card. Halo cranked at 1280x1024 can get choppy when there are lots of grenades, etc. Doom 3 has to be run with a lower resolution and lower detail.

Cool things... I finally have a machine with an integrated DVD/CD burner and DVD decoder... previously I had DVD drives without the decoder, or an external USB 1.1 CD burner. Should be a blast to be able to actually burn a CD/DVD in reasonable time.

I'll post full stats later, but it might be a couple days... i tend to get slightly obsessive with new toys :-)