The one with the last big purchase (action).

Oops.

So, after much contemplation over the course of an entire afternoon, I decided that I was lacking joshiki after spending the entire time comparing specs on FutureShop.ca while quoting a custom build for myself on Netlink’s website. The two PCs turned out to be vastly different – the one on Netlink became hella expensive just for the built-in sysbd specs I wanted ($1800 just for LGA775, DDR2, 1066 FSB, SATA RAID-5, GBLAN, NForce4/ATI Express, dual-DVI, four HDDs, etc.), but in the end, I was conservative and went with a refurbished HP Pavilion Media Center a1328x for $370. It had all the basics I needed – LGA775, DDR2, P4 3.0 GHz, SATA, LightScribe burner, and even a 9-in-1 card reader. Sure, I won’t get to have the monster RAID PC in the case I wanted, but aesthetics aside, the PC I need is going to be spending her life on the floor, handling my Japanese media downloading, archiving, and viewing. I don’t think I need much else aside from that. Regardless, the a1328x only had 512 MB of RAM and no DVI port, so I went back to Netlink and bought a 1 GB DDR2 stick of RAM and a GeForce 7300GS. More than enough. The PC was $545 and the upgrades were $215, taxes and shipping included. Cheapest kick-ass PC I ever bought.

Not that I’d honestly use it for much gaming, but I need something with a bit more oomph to play my HDTV encodes. Oh, and Win XP MCE is a nice touch, since I have an orphaned remote control for it.

Now I can relax this weekend, as I had originally planned to reinstall the OS on Mitake from scratch. Talk about dodging bullets!

以上。。。であります！