well my venerable old p4 2.8ghz has lasted me for quite awhile, but I think it's on the last legs of its usefullness. It's really starting to approach the minimum range for most modern video games. However what is really starting to annoy me is my computer's lack of multitasking abilities.
About an hour ago I had these programs open
1) visual studio express edition c#
2) Pandora (internet music)
3) ZoneAlarm
4) IE7
At the same time I was unzipping and installing the SoftImage XSI 3d modeling tool that was made available for XNA devs.
Needless to say my computer shit a brick (translation: had trouble running).
I guess this is to be expected as I only have 1 gig of ram, and am still running standard harddrives (not sata)
The dilemma is I have basicly no money to throw around at the moment. I guess I'll just spring for another 1 gig stick of DDR pc3200 ram and hope for the best. The dumb thing about that is that DDR memory prices have remained the same (or gone up!) despite the introduction of DDR2 memory. In other words I'm paying more for outdated tech. grrrr
maybe I'll win a computer in a contest or something.. yeah right.
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----------Quick Game News-----------------------------------------
My next project will be a guinea-pig simulator. Yup guinea pigs. Guinea pigs are a great subject for me to develop some simple ai techniques with because Guinea Pigs are relatively simple creatures (compared to most humans at least).
I now easily run Delphi and VS2005 Express VM at the same time alog with the misc email, music, web and business management tools at the same time.
It is a cheap upgrade compared to doing the whole lot. YMMV, of course.