New computer

[CompWiz]

Did you know Alienware charges $100 extra for Windows XP Professional instead of Vista? what a bloody ripoff!

In case you haven't noticed, all of their prices are a rip off. Their computers are extremely overpriced.

My biggest worry about building my own system is that by the time I'll have all components, the oldest one will be outdated already

I really doubt that that will be a problem. Even if it takes a month to order all of your parts(getting them when they're on sale), they'll still be new. Think about it. If you bought a stick of high-end DDR2 RAM like 2 months ago, it would still be high end now. The money you'll save will be easily worth the time it takes.

Note though that it isn't $2500, but €2500, which is roughly $3300 (that suddenly sounds like a lot more imo)

yeah, I didn't notice that. well, that is enough money to basically build the Ultimate Computer. You probably won't be able to afford to go dual CPO, but other than that, you can basically put all the fastest and best parts in. AMD Quadcore, 4GB of high-end corsair dominator RAM, a good motherboard with SLI support(or Crossfire, if you prefer), two top of the line video cards in SLI/crossfire, one of those super-fast new Hitachi 1tb drives(or two), X-Fi sound, a sweet looking case, and maybe even water cooling.

However, a top gaming rig like that from somewhere like Alienware or Voodoo or Falcon, etc... would cost around $7000 or more. There's really no point in buying a high-end rig from a company. It's just such an insane price difference from what the parts cost.

[hop]

I'm of the school of thought of buying a cheap pre-built machine, then upgrading individual parts until it's not worth doing it any more, then repeating the cycle. Then again, parts are pretty expensive in the UK, compared to what I see listed on US sites. :)

Pre-built does not mean you can't get your own parts - it just means it's not a dell or hp or whatever. And that's a good thing because they all always skip out on quality or performance with at least 1 or 2 core components to be able to offer a low price.

You can still get them cheaper than dell and such in the UK. In fact, UK prices are a tiny bit better than the prices here and I think in the rest of Europe.

Though they are still more expensive than in the US, but you must not forget the shipping costs which are huge for sites like newegg. Over here shipping a complete system with monitor and everything is like 7 euro and you have it the very next day whereas shipping within the states would be more like over 70 dollars.

[CDI]

ANYWAY. I would get 1gb of RAM, but the motherboard supports 768mb max, and I don't even get to use all of it because the Crusoe proc uses some RAM for it's CMS.

If anyone knows any other CMS systems for the Crusoe to emulate other procs at the same time, it'd be nice, cool really. Also, Windows XP TE is great, it has a bunch of the nifty programs Vista does like Inkball and Journal, but it's better, because it's a tablet. And the 'laptop' mode isn't bad either, the keyboard is small but useful.