I was building a PC for a friend recently, and decided that the original PC needed to be updated. So I rolled up my sleeves and here is the result.  I have upgraded to a Quad Core Processor, a Phenom X4, and have added a Creative Labs X-Fi Sound Card, so the machine is better, faster, and has upgraded sound.   Here is a direct link to the newegg.com Wish List.

ASUS M3A78-EM AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard  – $79 - Asus makes well received motherboards, and this has great specifications.  We saved $50 by choosing an ATX mini motherboard instead of a regular ATX motherboard.

CORSAIR 4GB DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - $59 – Corsair is a leader in gaming memory.  This 4 gigs kit comes in 2 sticks, which allows you to run the memory in Dual Channel Mode for improved performance.  The motherboard will support a total of 8 Gig of memory in four slots, so you can upgrade to the maximum of 8 gig by simply doubling this memory order.

AMD Phenom 9600 Agena 2.3GHz Socket AM2+ 95W Quad-Core Processor – $95 – QUAD CORE 2.3 gig processor.  This Black Edition runs at only 95 low low Watts for reduced heat, and improved performance.  The Phenom X4 series is a great series for gamers, as the newer Phenom II processors are three times the price and certainly not 3x the performance.

EVGA GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 Video Card – $120 – This is a great, low price point, 512 MB Nvidia 9800 series card. Ihave been eVGA customer for years.  Their products are warrantied for life, and the last time I returned a card that died, I received an upgraded card for free!

Here is the one notable upgrade to the $600 Gaming PC:  A SOUND CARD!

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card – $91 – This is a great sound card, runs Dolby Home Theater sound, has Toslink Digital SPDIF audio outs, and is the reason I shaved a few dollars in other areas.  But we now have awesome gaming sound and improved overall PC performance by taking the sound processing off of the main processor and moving it onto the powerful 24 bit Creative Labs X-Fi audio processor.

Rosewill RP550-2 ATX12V v2.01 550W Power Supply – $50 – This power supply delivers 550 watts, quietly and consistently, with a cool blue lighted fan.

Cooler Master case – $50 – This case has great ventilation, can be set up with almost no tools, and is pretty sharp. It is also roomy and will hold additional drives and equipment if you would like.

SAMSUNG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe – Black – $25 – I like LightScribe well enough, but the only reason it’s here is because its free.  This SATA drive is fast, quiet, and  mostly cheap.

Western Digital 650 Gig 7200 RPM SATA 3.0 gig HD – $7o . Fast, quiet, and nice amount of storage for just $70.

You can mix this up a bit by adding a better graphics card, bigger hard drive, or a snazzier case if you would like. Remember, the goal here was to build a great gaming machine for $600, and we did that.  A PC with an nVidia 9800 series video card, 4 gig of fast gaming tuned RAM, and a QUAD CORE Phenom X4 processor.  The total parts list on my newegg wish list was $639, with $40 in mail in rebates.  That drops the total price to just $599.  What a great deal for a high end gaming PC.

I have built this machine, and it runs every game well on high settings.  The parts are all warrantied through the manufacturers, and New Egg has great return and exchange policies.

Let me know what you think, and if you have any questions, or need any help feel free to drop me a line.

Good Luck.

One of my favorite webcomics is Penny Arcade, written and illustrated by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik. The content material focuses mainly on video games, the gaming industry, and the gamer sub-culture. However, over the past year or two some more serious topics have come up, as the characters have, gasp, grown up a bit…. Click the strip above for a larger, more legible version.

Some of my favorite “real” paper comics tackle serious issue too. Funky Winkerbean, a strip I have read for many years, recently “killed off” a character, and reset the entire clock on the comic. All of the characters have been fast-forwarded 15 years or so, and their lives moved further into adulthood accordingly. Throughout however, Batiuk has covered topics like teen pregnancy, adoption, and U.S. servicemen returning home from Afghanistan with devastating injuries.

Doonesbury is always high on my list, but we have always expected serious topics from Gary Trudeau. His own characters are now dealing with issues like the massive number of brain trauma injuries to soldiers serving in Iraq, the elections, and the current administration. Trudeau’s characters are iconic, maybe none more so than Uncle Duke, the character based in part on late “Gonzo” journalist Hunter S. Thompson.

Trudeau ’s cast has aged gracefully, at the same time introducing new cast members to introduce us all to the new issues of today. He even has a blog for U. S. Soldiers serving in the middle east called The Sandbox. Here’s a great Washington Post article on Trudeau. I am still mystified as to why his web site is still on Slate. It’s so…. 1999.

Zits features Jeremy Duncan, a now 16 year old aspiring rock musician, and his parents, “who don’t understand anything“. The fanciful ways that the strip bends and distorts reality reminds me very much of Calvin and Hobbes. The character often morphs into younger, older, zanier versions of himself, much like Calvin. I cannot express, now that I have my own near-teenage son, how much I can relate to Jeremy’s gigantic feet. Have you priced sneakers lately?

A newer comic with great characters, including an always smoking version of the creator, is Stephan Pastis’ Pearls before Swine. The characters are flawed, but lovable, and if you look closely you will see a lot of subtle gems hidden amongst the simpler humor. Here is today’s strip, for Valentines Day:

I have a very soft spot in my heart for Calvin and Hobbes, likely the best strip ever, and I also love Peanuts, but I have left them off of my list for one simple reason – they are not being drawn today. While both are incredible works, but the one thing I like most about the comics is tomorrow’s strip, the promise of a continued relationship. What is goingt to happen to our friends? Will it be a light day, or a grave day? We know these characters, check up on them every day.

Like real life, the comics tug at our heart strings, and invite us along on great and wonderful adventures.

But do they always have to be so darn serious?

Yesterday’s question of the day over on Gizmodo was What don’t you like about Vista? This question tickled my fancy , since I thought, well, because… I HATE VISTA. I truly do. But I don’t feel badly, even Bill Gates hates Vista!

As a Microsoft consultant, I was an early adopter, first using Vista in beta, figuring I would need to, since it was inevitable, and that soon all PC’s would ship with Vista, like every new Microsoft OS before it had. The increased hardware requirements didn’t effect me, since as a gamer I generally only have a PC for a year or so, and my hardware is relatively current. I was set to go.

So I installed Windows Vista Home Premium, the 64 bit version. I used all new hardware to build the PC, and followed a standard hardware configuration I have used previously. My hardware list is important here as a control group factor, because I’ve built this same basic configuration in easily a dozen PC’s, both for myself, family, and clients, and it works.

Once installed, Vista proclaimed its temperate love for my new configuration by giving me a low, 5.4 out of 6.0 rating on my Windows Vista Experience rating (that sounds like and IMAX ride). My one low score was on my wimpy, dual core 3.3 gig processor. OK, there are quad cores out, so I figure I’m still OK. All my other hardware rated at 5.8 out of 6.0 or higher, with my video card and memory at 5.9. The Total Score rating seems to be based solely on your lowest score of the 5 components rated. It’s definitely NOT an average.

The latest incarnation of my PC includes the following basic hardware:

• A Gigabyte M61P-AM2 Motherboard,
• 4 Gigs of Corsair XMS2 – DDR2 800 memory
• An AMD Athlon 6000+x2 Processor
• An eVGA 8600GTS 512 MB GDDR3 video card

Wrap that in a $40 Cooler Master case, a $20 DVD burner and $75 SATA hard drive, a $75 power supply of your choice, and you have… The Ultimate $600 Gaming Machine. That’s another article though…

Every hardware fanboy will recognize not only these brands, but likely the specific models of these parts. I picked all of the from the Customer Choice Award Winners list at NewEgg.com. These were ALL best sellers, most with thousands of happy purchasers to their credit, before I bought them. I run the same configuration with Windows XP, and Fedora Core, with no problems. Ever.

At first I chalked it all up to being Beta. Who can bitch about beta software? The release version was worse, and it keeps getting worse. Here are the most obvious things that I can think of that I don’t like. Your own results many vary. These things have all plagued me from the day I got the product, and still plague my installation. Most I have given up fixing, and I am waiting for an open platform version of Mac OS.

Please add your own dislikes and grumblings in the comments at the end:

My list of 10 things I hate about Vista:

1. User Account Control. This feature is just plain awful. It is invasive, and it NEVER GOES AWAY. Even after being disabled, it will continue to ask you if it can re-enable itself, forever, each time you reboot. There is no way to stop this, or get rid of the big red X on the shield at the bottom of your task bar. In Microsoft’s eyes, it seems, you are permanently deficient due to your lack of good sense by choosing to decline using the User Account Controls. Microsoft can’t believe your stupidity by not trusting their good judgement here, and will therefore never forgive you. But they will nag you, FOREVER. Oh and if you aren’t Microsoft certified, and highly computer literate, good luck even turning it off. It’s not so easy to find. It really doesn’t identify itself until AFTER you turn it off. Most users wont know what it is called, except that it sucks. For these reasons, the User Account Control is easily the single most annoying thing about Windows Vista for me.
2. Vista is not a stable gaming platform. I run a pretty vanilla system, see above, and it still crashes, a lot. In many games from many vendors. Not weird Japanese games, but mainstream, best sellers, from big companies. None of whom, seem to have a Vista logo on their boxes either, despite this product being out in beta for two years. All of these games crash. Most crashes seem to be sound card, so I changed them, many times. Different video cards, new drivers, the lot. All different hardware, and still more CRASHES, and yet more crashes. Bleh.
3. Windows XP file sharing works, BUT NOT in Vista? Certainly not as well. I use it in the office, and my customers offices, ALL THE TIME. This was a no-brainer back in Windows 95, and worked great in XP. Now, IT DOESN’T WORK! Go ahead Vista users, right click on a desktop folder and SHARE IT. See the amazing results, and the later fun connecting your XP machines to it. Grrrrrrrrr. I took this for granted for so long until it stopped working.
4. Issues connecting to Windows 2003 Active Directory domains. IT’S THEIR OWN PRODUCT. Of course, this should work. Google this. It doesn’t work, and there is a checklist of stuff to reconfigure and registry hacks to follow to make it work. Their premier desktop OS should connect to their own server OS, with no issues, out of the box. Simple, duh. It doesn’t. Why not? I am astounded by this.
5. Windows Vista (mostly 64 bit) drivers are still missing. Vista Beta wa out for two years and retail has been out for a year, and manymanufacturers still don’t have drivers. Why? My theory is that they are waiting for SP1 to arrive, to see if the product is finally stable enough before wasting their own hard to come by $$$ developing drivers for and OS that is universally dissed.
6. Sound card issues. My name brand Soundblaster XtremeGamer X-Fi sound card drivers crash in Vista. Want to hear the best part – They crash earlier and more often each new release. That’s right, they keep MAKING THINGS WORSE. I would blame Creative Labs, but their drivers for XP are solid. I have tried other cards, same story.
7. Memory issues – Vista has trouble with memory over a certain amount, and no surprise, it crashes. Google, Vista 4 Gig memory, and see the articles about the blue screen of death. Oh and thanks for keeping that tradition alive Microsoft. I would like to formally suggest a soft, warm, green screen of soothing shutdown screen instead. It at least sounds better, despite all the sssss’s. Get your human factors people on this, please.
8. USB issues – I use a bunch of USB Drives in my work, moving files all around, backing them up and the like. I have a half dozen flash drives and external 250 gig drives. They all work well with XP. All of them. Different vendors, different drives. Vista on the other hand, decides each time you want use the drive, if it will work, and if so how much of your old data is accessible. And then, it KILLS YOUR DRIVE. Really. I have had drives randomly need repair, as suggested by Vista, ultimately be reformatted inorder to work again. Forget about the data on the drive. Using any of the drives to move data from XP to vista or vice versa sucks I count on problems whenever I do it. Lost files, corrupt files, and such mean that I am afraid to reinstall XP on my machine, because I am afraid Vista’s lasting ugly legacy will be a useless external copy of all my data, and new XP machine that will not get any more updates after this summer.
9. DVD and CD Burning Nightmares – None of this works well. I will admit I recently bought Roxio to burn CD’s, and it works, But I had to do this because Vista won’t do it. This feature worked easily in Windows XP. Drag files to the CD Burner, click burn these files, and done. Go ahead and try that in Vista, if your drive is recognized properly by the operating system. This has essentially never worked for me, and is another lost feature of XP.
10. Stupid Hardware Management – Vista lists my main hard drive in the Safely Remove Hardware thingee. Again, this is my primary (and only) hard drive. Why? This is an internal SATA hard drive, and has NO USB components at all. Vista seemingly does not care, and offers to let you shut it down. I am too afraid to destroy my HD in order to find out what happens. Has anyone else been willing to try this?
11. Office 2007 – OK, it’s nottechnically Vista, but it looks and acts like Vista so it’s number 11. It’s kind of a Spinal Tap thing, I guess. This product is awful also, like its family member, from the simple fact that it doesn’t use the same file format as the last 5 versions of the product back to 1997, but that they moved EVERYTHING around. When I first got Office 2K7, it took me 15 minutes to find SAVE and PRINT. This practice reminds me of how my local grocery store moves everything around in the store every few years. I really only want my toilet paper and my print buttons to be in the same place all the time, is that so much to ask?

This product was rushed or just plain mismanaged from the start. They supposedly rewrote Vista from scratch to replace the antiquated XP, which after three service packs, finally worked.

I wanted Vista, I like new software. Its fun to learn. What I have learned here is that anything can get knocked off the tracks, even Microsoft. Let’s see how they recover with Service Pack 1. This better be good, those new Mac Air laptops are starting to like mighty tempting.

I have updated the specs for the Ultimate $600 machine in a new post here titled The UPDATED Ultimate $600 Gaming Machine.

It now has a sound card, better graphics, and a quad core processor!

Mark  – 4/4/09

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I was writing another article, and I had to make a hardware list of my PC inventory. I realized that I have refined my gaming machines down to a standard set of parts over the years, that I buy the same basic list now, and it all costs less than $700. Actually, about $680.

I buy all my hardware from NewEgg.com, and every part I select is usually from their Customer Choice Award Winners list. This list is rated by the buyers of the hardware,. My logic is that if everyone else likes the parts, they will work for me. This method of picking hardware has served me very well for almost 10 years now, and I now have few hardware issues. I can also choose my price point for each hardware item, and then choose the highest rated parts for that price on the newegg site, which made it easier to write this.

So here’s the list, and where necessary a few notes. I have posted this as a Public Wish List at NewEgg. Oh, and I don’t make any money from newegg, but I like their service and return policies. Great pricing too.

Gigbyte M61P AM2 Motherboard – $75 - Gigabyte makes solid motherboards and better AMD motherboards, reasonably priced ones.

4 Gigs of Gskill DDR2 800mhz memory – $90 – GSkill makes great gaming memory – cheap gaming memory too. 4 gigs will be enough for any game you play.

AMD Athlon 6000+x2 Processor – $160 – dual core 3.3 gig processors. low wattage, great series for gamers. Comparable Intel Processor -

eVGA 8600GTS 256 MB GDDR3 video card – $140 – This is a great, low price point, 256 MB Nvidia 8000 series card. It will run almost any game you can buy at the highest settings, runs DirectX 10, and is well under $200. Nice.

Rosewill RP550-2 ATX12V v2.01 550W Power Supply – $70 – This power supply delivers 550 watts, quietly and consistently, with a cool blue lighted fan.

Cooler Master case – $40 – This case has great ventilation, can be set up with almost no tools, and is pretty sharp. It is also roomy and will hold additional drives and equipment if you would like.

$30 SATA – DVD Burner of your choice (I picked a nice Samsung one on my list)

$75 250 Gig SATA 3.0 gig HD. These items are fairly easy to find if you want to add HD space or more drives. required case under $50.

You can mix this up a bit by adding a sound card, for better sound, or a better graphics card. The key here is that you can build a great gaming machine for under $700 – one with a nVidia 8000 series video card, 4 gig of RAM, and a dual core 3.3 gigahertz processor.

Let me know what you think, and if you have any questions drop me a line.

Good Luck.

They suffer addictions, fall in love, make money, and form communities complete with leaders and laws. Many spend more time in their alternate identities than they do in real life.

Did you know that there are people who were making a living by farming in the virtual world in 2005. Huh?

People spending 24 hours online playing a game is not unheard of. You can still see hundreds of characters and World of Warcraft Gold for sale on ebay for $9.99.

Heres 10 Ways that online gaming will change the world. This is a great article on the subject, and how quickly this phenomenon has grown, and will continue to grow.

If you know anyone that plays one of these games – talk to them about it. Ask them how much they play. Find out if they have any friends online, and how close these friends are, and how often they communicate.

Find out if your friends spend a lot of money playing games online. Most importantly, ask them why they like to play, and what they like about the game or games that they play. Soon you may be asking them to walk your avatar to the mall to go shopping at Armani.

Yes, a shoot em up, loud explosions, up all night computer gamer. Its a good hobby for an insomniac like me. A bit embarrasing for a 40 year old, but there are many more embarrassing hobbies out there. Model trains anyone? Stamp Collecting? Did those too. Not any more.

I recently was passed this game for consideration. Peacemaker is a game where the goal is to win peace in the Middle East. Now, I was a bit surprised too, and I’ll admit that I snickered a bit, thinking, “a peace game, that’ll sell”.

It’s an educational tool however, a discussion provoking tool, and it’s actually fun and challenging. Look at the people that have seen and endorsed this idea.

Impact Games is located in Pittsburgh, PA. You can download a demo of the game here.

They are looking for Beta-Testers. Sign up here.

Worthwhile.