yeah 160 mph would be like a formula 1 racecar or something :shock:. I once did 90 (mph) on a 25 road. If I had gotten caught I don't know what would've happened to me. Nearly ran some poor bloke over too :(. That could've been messy. Ever since then I've slowed down. It was during my younger, stupider years.

The lesson to learn here isn't to not speed. It's to not get caught ;).

I don't know if this is old news, but I read this great article (warning, it's very long) about a new way to ****fy gamers. I think it's about time we seriously considered this, because this Hardcore/Casual divide is seriously stupid. If you play a "Hardcore" game like Halo 3 only for an hour or so a week, are you Hardcore? If you play a "Casual" game like Wii Sports for hours every day, are you Casual? It's stupid because it's way too broad.

I myself ran into this when I installed the Nintendo Channel on my Wii and started voting on my games. "Please specify: Hardcore/Casual for Wii Fit!" Hmm, I dunno ... although as a GAME it might be considered casual, I PLAY it every day for about an hour ...

So, having read the article (you DID read it right? :)) what kind of gamer are you?

As for me, I'm a Tourist with Completionist tendencies. I tend to buy games for the storylines, so that I can experience the storyline, which is why in a game with both single and multiplayer, I always play single player first (very Tourist). However, I like to look in every nook and cranny for hidden stuff (Completionist).

Also, I'd say I'm a Premium player. My problems aren't when a game's too short because my time's limited anyway. It's when a game is "too long" that I have a problem (i.e. MMO's, which have have an unlimited committment that I can't make). That's why Heavenly Sword was a lot better for me than a lot of people, and why Warhawk didn't appeal to me as much as everyone seemed to insist it should've.

So much I wish I could get, so little cash ... ah the trials of the not-so-wealthy. As a gamer I have a fairly decent rig, I suppose. My processor isn't the fastest (in fact it's the slowest quad core, at only 2.4Ghz), I certainly don't have the fastest RAM (only 667, wish I could upgrade to 800), and even my graphics card is starting to feel the pinch (8800GT. but isn't that new 9800GX2 or whatever it's called supposedly way better now?).

Anyway! My point being, it's that time of year again. A year of decision making, and I could really use your input. I want to start upgrading this rig, but I want to use my money effectively, so I'll put down the current specs of this old jalopy and maybe you could help me figure out what's the best place to upgrade?

Mobo: NVidia nForce 680i SLI (although I'm not actually using its SLI features)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40Gh
Graphix: Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512mb OC
RAM: 4GB DDR2 667 :(
HDD: 1TB (2 500GB. one Seagate the other Western Digital)
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 750W
Inputs: Bluetooth wireless Logitech standard MX5000 Keyboard & Mouse
Sound: Creative X-fi Xtreme Gamer
Speakers: Logitech 2.1 System (just some older junker set worth about $20)
Monitor: 22" Gateway (it's an OK LCD. Not THE best, but it's widescreen and has nice color saturation)

So, there's the system, all laid out. Probably the first thing I was thinking about was the memory, but frankly I never actually had much problems with it to be honest. Just they were the only thing that really stuck out as something I could probably upgrade at minimum cost. Other things I considered were:

Should I get a gaming keyboard & mouse? Any suggestions to some good ones that aren't like $100 each?

Improve the processor to the 2.66 Core 2 Quad? I'm DEFINATELY not going the Core 2 Extreme route, I don't think I'll EVER have THAT much cash to just drop on something.

Better monitor? Mine's pretty good as it is, but it certaintly can't compare to anything I could get for $500-$650 (which is the absolute MAX I'm dropping on this little project)

Better graphix? I guess I COULD but is that new 9800GTX or whatever really THAT much better than an 8800GT? For that matter it'd probably be cheaper to just get another 8800GT and SLI it with the one I already have, and I'd probably get better performance out of it too.

So can you guys give a fella any suggestions as to what direction I should take?

Well, just my 2 pennies, but I've had Vista for nearly a year now and while I can't say I've run into any real problems, it certainly hasn't helped me any. When I was on XP, I could run my machine with the OS sucking at most 300mb of RAM. Vista, on the other hand, hordes almost a gig. Now, yes, I'm going to be buying Vista x64 (and I have 4 gigs of ram in the wings, waiting), but the fact is I shouldn't have to do that just to feed my operating system :(. I don't mind doing it if it's for something neccessary, but it's not! It's for DRM (I thought the RIAA has proved rather conclusively that DRM is just = FAIL) and eye candy, neither of which I want or need. DRM = FAIL like I said, and eye candy I won't see because I'll be playing Bioshock fullscreen.

Well, at least I won't say Vista is horrible, and you CAN turn off the eye candy if you absolutely must. But it also isn't a must-upgrade either. If your computer has XP it's probably best to stick with it, which I think is the point a lot of people are making. See, Microsoft wants you to spend $100+ on Vista, even if you have XP already. I'm just saying, not so much.