tips and advice for a new compy

If you're absolutely certain that you're not up for homebrewing a PC then.. places I would not recommend include ibuypower.com, alienware, or anything with XPS in the name from dell.

No matter what place you go to to build your pc make sure you have enough hard disk space. my current system has about 240 GB (1 spare 40GB drive I had plus a 250GB drive.. with about 50gig of that for a linux partition to muck around on ) and about 50GB has already came and went (on my windows side, not including the linux partition).

As far as what processor to use, AMD or Intel? well it's a matter of preference at this point. Intels have the better performance edge, but are a little pricier than AMD processors. However, AMD is usually seen as the cheaper of the two. No matter what you choose you're garunteed dual cores and if you're gaming, that matters. Avoid AMD sempron and Intel Celeron processors at ALL costs.

RAM is another important thing to have. Generally speaking, more == better. Balance the cost of ram with good video card for your system but the bare minimum for a quality gaming rig these days is at least 1GB of ram, with many saying that 2GB of ram is the way to go now.

The video card is the heart of the matter for your video gaming rig. If you can afford SLI or using two of the same video cards for that added performance boost, go for it, if not video cards to avoid are anything and I mean ANYTHING integrated, anything that uses "hypermemory" or anything of that sort. You want a video card with dedicated graphics memory. It should say "GDDR3" for the type of memory. I would recommend a video card with no less than 128MB of GDDR3, with 256MB guaranteeing a smooth running game. I would recommend nvidia video cards, especially if you're Linux-Curious. NVIDIA has official linux drivers... I'd still recommend NVIDIA even if you're not linux curious because as of late, their video cards just seem so much better.

If you're looking to get the most out of your game and can afford it, buy a sound card, but only if they offer creative sound cards. Most games these days, such as Battlefield 2142 and Neverwinter Nights 2 have sound options specific to the High Performance Sound Blaster sound cards by creative that can honestly enrich your gaming experience and make it that much more fun. Try to avoid integrated sound, because it's a small performance hit while you're gaming. It's small, but it is there.

As far as an operating system goes, in an effort to push the next big microsoft OS, vista is going to be forced on you regardless of where you go. However if you know a friend who wouldn't mind installing windows XP on your system and hunting down drivers and such, do yourself a favor and stick with windows XP. As stated, the only reason to upgrade to vista at the moment is directX 10. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Vista is a memory hog and cross indexes the living shit out of everything, even if you tell it not to. You want to be able to find anything on your computer fast? use google desktop.

If you have to stick with vista, or even with windows XP check windows update often. Check the manufacturer website often as well for new and updated drivers. it's very important to keep your video card drivers at the very least up to date. They usually resolve strange issues you have or better yet can squeeze out a little more performance if you're on the lucky side.


as far as laptops go, you said you're interested in apple laptops and apple is just not my gig. I'll go so far to say as I hate apple with all my passion, but that's as far as I go. I'm not here to start a flame war or get kicked off the boards. There's 4chan if I wanted to do that. Listen to Killmoms if you really want your macbook. Just be prepared to pay a heft wad of cash if you want a mac laptop that can perform.

Things to look for in a laptop:

hard disk space: around 120GB is reasonable
RAM: you want 1GB, this should do nicely on a laptop.
Processor: Core 2 Duos are the only way to go when you're purchasing a laptop, I'm sorry but AMD just doesn't hold a candle in the laptop arena.
Video: If you want a good video card on your laptop (read: NOT integrated) then be prepared to pay for it if you're looking to play the latest and greatest on the go. I'll recommend NVIDIA here too for the same reasons as the with the desktop. If you're looking for a high quality video card in your laptop, then avoid anything with "hypermemory" again, you want GDDR3 memory.
Sound: there are some Creative PCMCIA sound cards that you can use in a laptop. I wouldn't recommend them though. Stick with integrated sound on your laptop and you'll be fine.
OS: you're getting a mac. so you're getting OSX. However you can set up a dual boot situation between OSX and Windows via bootcamp or you can get parallels and run windows in what's known as a virtual machine while you're in OSX. Really depends on what you want to do. If you want to do anything 3d-related in windows, then you'll need to dual-boot. Parallels is developing 3d support and so is VMware fusion, but it's not here yet, or at least not that great yet.

did I miss anything else?

Jam it back in, in the dark.