Right now you could say that we are in a golden age for GPUs.  The performance available at the $100 will have you running any modern game at reasonable frame rates with a little tweaking.  You can’t turn on the bells and whistles, nor will you be able to set your resolution to 2560×1600, but you can run them.  The days of requiring a serious investment of cash to upgrade your card to bare minimum have gone, though they will return some day.  In the mean time if you are using an 8800 series card, you should really upgrade, it is the perfect time to do it. 

What does require you to save up a few pennies are the SSDs that are replacing platter based storage.  The performance they offer is nothing short of incredible, the amount of abuse they can take is phenomenal and the sound they make is unmeasurable.  That is not to say that platter based drives are all noisy and cheap, they still have a lot of uses and should not be considered dead.

At the Fragging Frogs’ lily pad, you might notice a bit of excitement, as there is an interesting update looming.  It seems the folks at EA have decided to update Battlefield 2, rolling up both expansion packs as well as a host of changes and improvements.  Look for weekly games starting up, giving you a chance to blow up, maim and otherwise deliver flaming death to fellow forum members.  The Bullfrogs of The Lightning Round are playing a different game, but one that is not any less dangerous, while the Trading Post is always friendly and full of great deals and trades. 

 
Remember folks, friends don’t let friends buy gimmicky NICs;  they do tell them to catch the latest episode of the PC Perspective Podcast, it is free and will also improve your network speeds the same amount as the Killer NIC.