I would go XP purrsonally, I still hear nothing but complaints from people around me about Vista!
As for the other stuff, I have no idea really. My Dell 84oo has went so well (2 years), that I havent needed to buy a new rig, just tossed a new card on and added a gig of ram. My older one is hooked up to my TV, still going. Had no problems with them here, just extremely hard cases to modify if you ever want to. I never went XPS, Ive always just bought a regular desktop system with a big processor and configured it with good stuff, it was way cheaper to do it that way. The only difference to me seemed to be the look of the thing!
I would get the biggest card possible tho, that's just what Ive always done. Better to be ahead of the times than behind in that dept. I polly wouldnt SLI tho, I'm too cheap to go that far.
Nowadays, I think theyve done things beyond the superficial such as improvements in FSB and cooling (finally, that's the case modding that i was talking about that Ive had to do myself up to this point). The liquid cooling will destroy small bank accounts tho so Id prolly still go fan cooled. I just fiddled with a "gimme everything" system on there and had it up to like 7k in no time!
They stand by their stuff tho, i'm the de-facto tech geek here at work, and weve had some warrantied stuff go bad, and we had the replacement the next day.
as for free security software, I exclusively use and recommend Zonealarm firewall, and AVG antivirus. Alot of other security software will attempt to take over your entire PC seemingly, but neither one of them do anything more than their job. No popups, no begging, no bullshit. Both troublefree, non-invasive, and they work! For free ='.'=
As for the other stuff, I have no idea really. My Dell 84oo has went so well (2 years), that I havent needed to buy a new rig, just tossed a new card on and added a gig of ram. My older one is hooked up to my TV, still going. Had no problems with them here, just extremely hard cases to modify if you ever want to. I never went XPS, Ive always just bought a regular desktop system with a big processor and configured it with good stuff, it was way cheaper to do it that way. The only difference to me seemed to be the look of the thing!
I would get the biggest card possible tho, that's just what Ive always done. Better to be ahead of the times than behind in that dept. I polly wouldnt SLI tho, I'm too cheap to go that far.
Nowadays, I think theyve done things beyond the superficial such as improvements in FSB and cooling (finally, that's the case modding that i was talking about that Ive had to do myself up to this point). The liquid cooling will destroy small bank accounts tho so Id prolly still go fan cooled. I just fiddled with a "gimme everything" system on there and had it up to like 7k in no time!
They stand by their stuff tho, i'm the de-facto tech geek here at work, and weve had some warrantied stuff go bad, and we had the replacement the next day.
as for free security software, I exclusively use and recommend Zonealarm firewall, and AVG antivirus. Alot of other security software will attempt to take over your entire PC seemingly, but neither one of them do anything more than their job. No popups, no begging, no bullshit. Both troublefree, non-invasive, and they work! For free ='.'=
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