The difference between man and the ape is that when an ape looks in the mirror, he just sees another monkey

The best part about getting a new computer is just playing around with it. I knew that the technology had made enormous advances over the past 3 or 4 years, but reading about them is one thing and actually digging in and playing with it is another.

I think what has amazed me most is how important the chipsets have become. In fact, it used to be that you didn't think about chipsets very much, if at all, but now if you're going to call yourself a serious computer buyer you have to consider them very carefully. I originally wanted to go with an NForce3 motherboard, myself, but Velocity Micro didn't offer that choice and so I ended up with the VIA KT800 instead. Still, I thought I was alright going with the VIA, but now that I've actually sat down with it and gone through it's strengths and weaknesses I think I probably should have found an NForce3 based mobo instead. Not that I'm bummed or anything. When you get down to it, the only significant difference between the two is the broken PCI/AGP lock in the VIA KT800, which means that overclocking is not really an option. I wasn't planning on doing any OC'ing anyways, so that's not much of a problem for me. It just bothers me that there is something broken with the chipset.

Other than that I'm pretty happy so far, and like I said, I feel like I'm getting a little more up to date with what's happening in the computer world. You know what they say, "wisdom is not knowing things that you don't know", and that's where you need to start before you can learn. Although, now that I think of it, there are a whole lot of people out there who know all kinds of things that they don't know, aren't there? In fact, getting ahead in life might really just be the art of knowing things you don't know and without anyone knowing it. Right?

Oh well, there are lots of vain people in the world. Better to be strong in your ignorance, than weak with vanity, that's what I say. Problem is, that only works if you keep learning new things, so, where's that motherboard manual?