My computing needs used to be small at home.  I use to think my lil’ ole Athlon with a Nvidia 5700LE video card was more than what I needed.  After all, I mostly used my computer for web browsing, tinkering here and there and God forbid, some work.

The Second Life came a long.  Well, the Athlon and the old Nvidia card got the heave hoe pretty quick.  Dual core Athlon 64, Nvidia 7900GS, whoohoo!  Yeah, I know.  No longer top of the line, but hey - I’m frugal, and at the time it was cost effective.

So now I find myself on the road, and having to use once again, inferior hardware for playing Second Life.  Gasp, even more inferior than before.  My laptop has a puny ATI 9000IGP video chip which is basically pathetic.  Of course this is starting to cause some laptop obsessions and a strong case of shopping-itist.  I think I’m going to get a new laptop in the next month or so - well - I HAVE to get one or I will just slit my wrists.

I’ve zero’ed in on one particular beauty, an ASUS C90.  Uh huh.  This beast has a few charming bits to it.  It uses a desktop CPU socket so you can actually upgrade the CPU.  Even put in a Intel Core 2 Extreme CPU.  It’s even got a mode to overclock the CPU.  Also the video card is replaceable.  In other words, you can upgrade the video.  It’s some standard called MXM NVidia came up with.  Right now they have an Nvidia 8600GT but there’s rumors of the latest hotness, a 8800GTX - which is what I’d really like… mmmmm…..  lol

Now, I’d prefer a bigger screen, because we all know that wider is better.  But I’d rather not lug around any more weight.  So, I think the C90 is the way to go.  I’m trying to keep my budget to about $1500.  Actually, I’d like to spend about $500, but that’s not going to cut it.

I know there much harder-core nerds out there than I.  Think it’s the right choice?

-Veyron

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