Upgrade-itis...

My current desktop system ought to be good for at least another year or so, but I've pretty much reached the limits of its upgradability: it's currently CPU-bottlenecked for many games, and I'd need to get a new mobo and new RAM if I wanted to upgrade that. So I've been ruminating on what to do eventually when I want to switch.

And... I'm starting to think that this one may be my last self-built box.

I do two demanding things with my computer: messing with photos, and gaming.

And lately, more and more games I've been wanting to play have started come out on consoles first, whereas the classics I like to return to don't require the very latest and greatest in graphics power.

So, I've been thinking that my next computer, say, bought in late 2009, just might be... a laptop.

This is the setup I have in mind:

* Workstation: laptop with quad-core CPU, Flash HDD for the OS and main programs, lots of RAM, decent graphics card, dual DVI out.
* Operating system: I'd probably have to be able to run Windows on it one way or the other, but it might be running inside a virtual machine hosted on Linux or OS X (if the laptop was a Mac).
* Network: upgrade to gigabit.
* Main storage: NAS on gigabit LAN, with automated backups onto two external HDD's, rotated so that one is always stored off-site.
* Game machine: XBox 360, connected to same monitor as the workstation.

I figure that I'd be able to play all the PC games I currently have on it at least as well as on my current box, it'd be a great deal more powerful for photoediting, I'd be able to take it on the road, and it'd be far more energy-efficient. The prices of Flash drives ought to have fallen enough over the next 12-18 months to make this a not-crazily-expensive proposition either.

Thoughts, anyone?

The details are different but I gave up my gaming desktop early in the year. I do all my gaming (and everything else) now on a decent Dell laptop. My old desktop is standing in as a storage server but as it ages, I'll change over to a NAS device or two.

I agree with all your conclusions. The laptop is perhaps not as comfortable for high-intensity action gaming but I don't do much of that and I was perfectly happy playing HL2 EP2 and Portal and NWN2, The Witcher and others were very nice. It's great to game in the living room with Kayla - without dominating the TV like a console would.

Don't think I'll go back to a desktop - laptops are only going to get better, after all.

I have a good DELL laptop also, which I use for gaming when I'm away from home. My biggest complaint with it, though, is the smaller size of the screen. I'm spoiled by my very large widescreen desktop moniter!!

I took it the opposite route. After being bogged down with an old machine as newer games came out I got tired of putting the low end band aid on the next machine so I went as top of the line as I could afford at Christmas.

6 months later I'm not disappointed I did that. My machine, for the most part, still outpaces or is at the recommended capabilities of the popular games right now and some of the big ones that came out that I'm yet to play. Its nice to play Oblivion and NWN2 so smoothly when the kids at Net Games want to play Portal or Crysis or SupCom I know I could keep up with them with my machine.

Nevertheless, I just don't do that much anymore. In testing my 7.1 speakers (I just bought some stands for it finally) I discovered I've only installed two games in six months to test it.

Of course, I've been focusing on classes and I've been avoiding serious gaming. I mean, if I reinstalled Civ IV then no one would see me and the wife would be very unhappy.

You can get pretty powerful (video wise) laptops these days. My brother just got one with an 8400 Nvidea in it and can run Call of Duty 4 at close to the maxed out settings. I think he paid around $1100 (US) for it. Only downside is that obviously you can't upgrade the video card in it down the road.