I could write about my own life in this blog and reflect on how much my son, Nathaniel, has grown in a year (he's only a year old)t, but that is boring. Actually, I was thinking about my computer. I bought it a year ago and a lot has happened to it over that short span. I was actually only able to afford my computer because of Tax Return Money, and I think my wife wanted me to put it somewhere esle. Even then I only spent $450 dollars on it when I bought it from Amazon, but that was and still is a good ammount of money for us. It was $579 less $30 for opening an amazon credit card account less two $50 mail in rebates. I still ended up paying $30 in shipping though so I guess it was more like $479 in total.

Upgrading my computer:

Anyway for what I spent I got quite a lot. My computer is a Compaq Presario and looks like the one pictured above. I've listed my computer specs several times in this blog, but here is the original confuguration: 2.8 Ghz Intel Pentium D dual core, 1 GB DDR2 RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, Winodws Vista Home Premium, and a PCI-e slot. Of course it also came with the required bloatware installed too. It did pretty well out of the box, but there really wan't anything special about it (unless you want to consider Windows Vista Special).

So anyway I really wanted to use Media Center as my TV and for that I needed a Tuner. If anyone else is looking to do the same I don't recommend the Hauppauge Win-TV-HVR 1600. Thats is what I have and it works for what I need it to do, but not nearly as well as advertised (click here for my review). Once I had that going I realized that my computer had a lot of problems with running Media Center. I figured that since it was reccomended that you get a video card with Windows Vista that that might solve the problem.

I actually had no idea about video cards when I bought one, and I still think they're needlessly confusing to newcomers, but I wanted one so I did my research. Thanks to my magical abilities and the internet, I figured out that I could get one but had to consider that I only had a 300 Watt power supply. I also learned about PCI-e and AGP and PCI and was glad that I managed to pick a computer that was able to be upgraded. So I went out and picked the best video card I could find for my power supply. I bought an EVGA 7300GS for $100 in May last year from Circuit City. I slightly regret this purchase because the same item has consistantly sold for $50 at Amazon since 2 days after I bought it at the store (now it is only $40). I also wanted the Ego boost from a greater Windows Experience Index on my machiene. It went up from an original 3.0 to a whopping 3.2. I was always a little irked about that.

Sadly, the video card only marginally increased performance of my PC and I still had problems in Media Center. Well, this time I actually checked the CPU and RAM usuage to see where the problem was and sure enough it was the RAM. How did I not initially think that buffering several GBs worth of video so I could rewind live HDTV would use a lot of RAM, I don't know, but I've got some more RAM for it since then. I bought the two 1GB stick or 4200 DDR2 ram for $35 each ($70 for both) for myself for Christmas. It was probably one of the best gifts I ever bought myself. I would reccomend anyone who really wants to use Vista to go to 2GBs of RAM. You can do a lot more with it.

Conclusion?

So that has been the evolution of my computer over the first year. It is weird thinking about it, but in total I think I've spent $740, which seems like a lot, but I know I've gotten the use out of it. I've installed a couple games including Halo 2 for Window's Vista, which I've talked about before. Of course I've also used it to watch and record hundreds of TV shows in HD including the 6+hour MLB All Star Game , an entire season of Heroes, and several episodes of House. I've also spent untold hours on the internet and still use my computer to view and store all the pictures I take and all my music. It does a great job.

Of course I'm not done with my computer. I'm still considering upgrading the power supply and Video Card, but before that I need a new monitor. I'm still using an old 19" CRT (BIG and UGLY) which I got for free. I want to move to something bigger, maybe a projector? I was also thinking I might get a Blu-Ray drive. Currently I don't watch many movies, but I would like the ones that I do watch to be in HD. It would be nice to be looking back next year and thinking about how much my computer has evolved over 2008. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Console Vs PC

Anyway, I was thinking about cost of ownership for PC gaming. It is true that you can invest several thousands of dollars on a PC. Still, right now the games costs lest and my system proves that you don't need much in a PC. For $500 - $600, comparable to a PS3, you can get a very capable computer system today. Also there is always the option to upgrade desktop computers (which obviously I'm a fan of). So it is possible over a 5-10 year span owning a computer and buying and playing games for it will be cheaper. Still, I must admit it is much more confusing than the console world and if that is what is keeping people out I don't blame them. I just want to challenge the idea of the High Cost of ownership on a gaming PC. Feel Free to respond.