The EULA for WinXP only allows you to install it on a certain number of machines (2 IIRC but I could be mistaken). That said, for your programming it's a toss up. I find that a Linux distro is...

Wow, I missed out on a bit of the thread :(


A 3.2GHz processor really isn't all that great anymore. I've got one. My dual core system runs circles around it. Seriously, get a dual core...

On 32-bit stuff (which is most everything still) the Core 2 blows AMD out of the water last I checked. It also comes with a price tag to match. There aren't a lot of 64-bit benchmarks, so comparing...

almost all mobos have thermal cutoffs now, so the temperature throttling shouldn't be a big deal. And most OSs also use dynamic throttling to keep pace with actualy CPU usage, so having a heat...

I'm not a fan at all of Pentium 4 chips. They had high clock speeds but relatively poor performance and high energy usage. Get a newer chip, and one with 2 cores. An Athlon X2 3800+ is also about...

My total was right about $450

I just built a cheap box to run Vista on a couple weeks ago. I was on a tight budget so I stuck with a AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+, 2GB of RAM, and an ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard. Don't know how the mobo...