-> On Mon, 20 Mar 2006, WAYNE CHIRNSIDE wrote:

-> > -> Yeah.  It's because it's now all obsolete in a month or less.
-> >
-> > Unless you have it's custom built it's obsolete before you walk out
-> > the door with it IMO.

-> For PC hardware, I tend to jump for "upgrade path"
hardware, custom built.
-> The top of the line is always priced at absurdly high levels, but there's
-> always a manufacturer or two out there making hardware that provides a
-> migration path (particularly in regard to motherboards).  The *first* CPU I
-> install on the motherboard usually runs at only a third or a fourth of the
-> maximum rated speed for the mobo's bus, though I tend to pick higher-speed
-> RAM in preparation for a future CPU boost.

-> When DDR first appeared, my first upgrade was a motherboard with both SDRAM
-> and DDR slots.  Now that PCIexpress is gaining momentum, my next upgrade
-> will probably be a motherboard with both an AGP-compatible slot, and PCIe
-> slot(s).  I usually choose a processor socket variant that appears to have a
-> reasonable upgrade future (today I'd probably recommend AMD socket-939 with
-> reasonably high top bus speed).

-> This approach has afforded me the flexibility to keep per-PC upgrade costs
-> well below US$200 a year, without sacrificing "usable" speed and
-> expandability.  My longest running motherboard was installed about 5 years
-> ago, and today has 1GB PC3200 DDR RAM and an AMD Sempron 3200+ (socket-A)
-> installed -- not too shabby for that kind of base hardware longevity.

I'm running free hardware other people disposed of with Linux
which operates very satisfactorily with a Pentium 3 450MHz, 256 Meg RAM
and 100 MHZ FSB.

I can see myself in the future buying something more cutting edge but
for now this free Gateway tower does just fine :-)    

Windows XP of course would be very unusable on this system.
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