Well, since I was way into military training last year, I pulled in a pretty good amount of income. Of course, thanks to our darling Federal monetary system, Uncle Sam had his grimy little hand in a lot of it... but thankfully, he has returned a portion of it.

Hooah.

A good portion. A very good portion. I bought some upgrades for my 17" Alienware lappy, as well as a new desktop build for HTPC purposes. As I will soon be attending classes at the local community college, I also picked up a little 13.3" laptop packed with features for a mere $630. It was awesome.

Alienware Area-51 m5790 (Pickle3000) - Nao with moar sexay!
-Intel Core 2 Duo T7400: 2.16 GHz, 667 MHz FSB, 4 MB L2
-ATI Mobility Radeon X1900: 256 MB
-Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 ABG
-3.25 GB DDR2-667 SDRAM
-640 GB (320 GB x 2) 5400 RPM SATA HDD
-Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit

Toshiba Satellite U305S2812 (Toad) - Kind of like the MacBook Air, with a port.
-Intel Core 2 Duo T5550: 1.83 GHz, 667 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2
-Intel GMA X3100 Graphics
-Intel Wireless Wifi Link 4965 AGN
-Toshiba Bluetooth 2.0 EDR
-Fingerprint Reader
-Built-in 1.3 MP Webcam
-2 GB DDR2-667 SDRAM
-250 GB 5400 RPM PATA HDD
-Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit

Pickle's Custom-Built HTPC (z-media) - Curing cancer and serving up HD, 24/7/365.
-Intel Pentium E2200: 2.2 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 1 MB L2
-Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L Motherboard
-ATI Radeon HD 3650: 512 MB, Passively Cooled
-2 GB DDR2-800 SDRAM
-500 GB 7200 RPM SATA HDD
-NZXT Trinity Case
-Logitech G51 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker system
-Gyration Media Center Remote and Keyboard
-Sony Bravia 46" 1080P LCD TV
-Windows VIsta Home Premium 32-bit

Critiques on the last bit? There's still time to add your two cents in the construction of Z-Media. Should we have added a sound card?

Looks good, although I'm not a fan of NZXT cases, but of course that's personal preference. I don't think you need a soundcard, the onboard should be sufficient enough.

lol that Alienware sounds intense, good setups overall.

Get Vista x64 for that Alienware laptop with 4GB of ram (or 3.25GB ). Nice collection of computers. Must be nice to have both a portable laptop, and a laptop with some serious power.

Hooah. Nice man, tax returns FTW.

Go for the 780G chipset on the HTPC ;P If it really is just for HD then it's good enough, you're able to OC the IGP if you need to.

That's a good idea, Vel. I might do some reading up on that. We kind of want it to be able to play some emulated console games though. You know, for the ten-foot experience.

I've been meaning for years to take the gutted NES I have sitting on my desk and turn it into a media relay / console emulator. The hardware to give it a 1.5GHz CPU isn't too spendy, maybe $200 total. I'd go the whole frackin way and connect the controller inputs up to internal serial ports, so you could just plug in real NES controllers. Then I could load my 300 S/NES ROM's onto her.

That would be sweet.

A_Pickle said:

Give me the software & I'll do some test runs if you'd like =)

McFly said:
Or you could just get a Wii and get virtual console games.

F**uuuuuuck that. I want to play it with a real NES controller, not same crazy Wii thingy. Plus, where's the fun in that? I'd never buy any games for the Wii anyway.

I'm with McFly, because I have and voluntarily fuel my irrational hatred towards consoles. My media center will play all of my old console games... at 1080P. Hah!

Well I'm not sure if I can afford the kind of hardware that can output 1080p and can fit inside of an NES case ... (actually I'm sure I can't ) ... but it should still be pretty kewl ... if I ever finish it, that is.

Bah. You only need a 3650... and a Mini-ITX board?

lol, I don't think that card would fit by itself into my NES case. Much less with the rest of the hardware.