The Other Waiting Game

It varies with me. My most recent/up-to-date/expensive piece of kit is my quad-core Power Mac G5. However, I got it at pretty much the last minute as I knew the Intel Macs were coming out and I wanted one without a TPM chip, as well as wanting to avoid supporting Intel (geek politics, I won't go into it here).

On the other side of the coin, I have yet to get any of the next-generation consoles, though I'm slightly antsy to nab a Wii.

As for TVs, I kinda got hosed and/or hosed myself with mine. I got a 32" CRT unit that can do 480p and 1080i as I was still expecting the PS3 to not be a complete overpriced joke, and was figuring Nintendo would do HD as well. All in all, I'm still glad I got it, but I'd probably have waited and done an LCD that could do 1080 and 720 as well, would be lighter, etc... Part of the problem with the setup I have is that I'm driving most of my home theatre setup from my old Power Mac G4 which, while it can handle 720p okay, doesn't have the CPU/GPU muscle for 1080. Of course, with a TV that can't do native 720p...you see where this is going.

One thing I'm throttling way back is my game purchases. I'll still hit game stores and check bargain bins, but since I'm not planning on adopting next-gen for a long time (minimum 3 years for PS3/XBox Next) I already went through and nabbed all the games of the current run that I'm really interested in playing. I have a significant backlog and I think my current library will last me the better part of that 3-4 years, so the recent titles (Valkyrie Profile 2 namely, also Tales of the Abyss) that I would want to pick up can wait until they come down in price.

As for computers in general, I generally go high-end with the hardest-to-upgrade components (CPU, GPU in laptops, motherboard) and then skimp a bit on other things like HDD size or memory, then upgrade those down the line when I start to feel the squeeze and when it's cheaper to do so. Doing that right now with my laptop, actually. 100GB/7200RPM is soooooo much nicer.

Jam it back in, in the dark.