How to compute like an addict.

Geek freinds of mine may or may not have noticed my almost complete apathy to chasing the cutting edge of computer products despite my love of fast computers, video games, and screwing with things to make them faster.

Non geek freinds of mine may or may not have noticed that I often use more than one computer at a time, usually about three. One PVR, one Desktop, and one auxilery desktop or laptop. This fulfills my media needs, my power computing needs (solidworks, games, etc), and my need to chat and do bandwidth bitchwork such as bittorrent downloading and encoding.

Theoretically, I could do this all on one computer with three screens just fine. But that would require a very powerful computer, and all of the power would be linked. So here in lies the Colleen solution. You could A, spend three grand on one computer, or be spend one grand on three computers. A computer for a third the price these days, is about 80% as fast. Thus, you get more overall computing power, more redundancy, and more more more.

Of course this means, that it is more difficult to use, as you do not drag things from screen to screen and save them all in the same spot. You really have to be up on your multitasking and system maintence. For me however, I think thats a small price to pay for being a total cheapskate.

So in the end, if you are considering asking me what I suggest for your next computer so you can do media center purpouses, gaming, and mobile computing... ask yourself if you really want just one computer to do all those things. Look at all the chip makers these days, multiple cores, multiple graphics cards, ect.

It will make your life more complicated to do it my way, but its cheaper and faster ;).