80plus posts

Akela got our dander up a bit last week, with his shot across the bow of hardware fiends everywhere. BI could go on at exhaustive, tedious, and utterly facetious length about how someone can be somewhere other than the bleeding edge, but why bother being that guy? As was once pointed out by some dude with my byline at Massively, Max/Min is an @$$hole.

For instance, look at the tremendous popularity of PopCap and Big Fish and their ilk -- simple, flash-based clicky games that make next to no hardware demands at all -- legions of addicts (BI's Substantially Better Half included) must see something in them. BI will admit to killing an occasional hour with Peggle or something high-concept like Dyson -- when we need a break from something that puts the screws to our six-month old build, or don't feel like being social in World of Warcraft.

New hardware ain't cheap. Well, it's almost always getting less expensive, but that's because something newer and shinier and bad-assier (and more expensive, natch) displaces it. But Akela brings up half of an interesting point -- killer graphics (and their attendant wattage draws) do not a killer app make.

Tim Allen wasn't precisely the same flavor of hardware guy that we are, but his Tool Time mantra, "More Power!" certainly resonates with a lot of computer enthusiasts. Not only do the games we play and the applications we use require more and more computational chutzpah to perform well, but the silicon bits themselves are not shy about sucking down the wattage to do it.

If you're considering an upgrade or a new build, you're going to need to feed that beast. Onward, to the supplies of power!