no Eli and Laura no longer go out, but they still long board together which is pretty sweet.
they were going out for like 2 years that's when i first met them.

Yeah, AD I was looking at those Athlons, but the only ones I found that looked good were the 3700+ models (like the one that you posted) and I've read from a few sources to avoid them at all costs. For example:

"There's no clear-cut price/performance leader, unless you simply believe that the lowest-cost CPU will offer the most bang for the buck. We were impressed with how the Athlon 64 3800+ placed, generally offering a slightly better position on the overall curve than most other CPUs. On the other hand, the Athlon 64 3700+, one notch below the 3700+ in price, looks to be the odd duck, and we'd recommend you avoid this one if possible." - see article here

Also, I checked a lot of benchmark tests for stuff that I will likely use the computer for, and I found that Intel's Pentium 4 640 outperformed all of the AMD Athlon 64s... the only exception being the 3800+ model, which was neck-and-neck. Plus, for the heavy multi-tasking that will happen with studio recording, the hyperthreading will be SUPER handy.

So in summary, I think I got a steal of a deal.

You most likely don't have a PCI-E slot, and it doesn't always come with SATA, my computer was bought before PCI-E came out and it can take up to 4 SATA drives. It's more likely you have a AGP slot. The price isn't that bad, but you could have gotten something brand new for about the same price. And though I prefer A64s over P4s, I do have to say it suits your needs more as the P4s outperform the A64s when it comes to encoding and rendering, but that's about it.

Oh, and hi everybody, I'm still alive down here

On Battle of Alberta, a brief discussion of appropriate jersey numbers brought up an excellent point. Mike "Red-headed Jeremy" Commodore should, indeed, wear jersey number 64. That this hasn't happened is nothing short of tragic.

too slow. oh well...

ok Taylor, you challenged me. I know this guy from my old job at the IGA. He was the boss that I didn't like so I left. More of an excuse really. You want the second machine down. Same price, larger hard drive, and you're getting an athlon instead of a pentium. It's one of those works better even though the numbers are smaller dealies. Seriously, I'm running a 3300 and it's faster than the 3.2 pentium. At least check it out. Might as well get your money's worth. The only difference is less ram. Of course, that's a new generation 1GB ram drives. I havn't heard good things about those. Basicaly it's not twice as fast as a 512 as it suggests it should be. kinda like 800 or so...try this

no going back now... I just bought it.

It's gonna kick ass.

We're gonna make some serious fuckin music on this thing.

hmm... actually, there probably IS a PCI-E slot in that computer since it's running a SATA drive. However, the slot is already used by that drive. Or maybe, it's NOT a pcie slot that the drive is in... in which case that's just a waste of a SATA drive. But whatevs. Like I said... it's not too crucial for me. For what I DO need, it's got plenty and it's hella cheap.

oh yeah... no, he's not going out with Laura. At least, not anymore.

If my gossip serves me right, his current g/f was at twister 2 weeks ago.

yeah, to be honest, the audio and video cards are pretty much a non-issue for me. I fully intend for this system to be a "work" computer. In other words, I'm only using it for graphics and audio work. I know that sounds funny; using it for graphics and audio and yet not caring about the graphics and audio cards. I'll tell you why:

We already have an external audio card worth close to 2 grand on it's own... so I'm not really gonna need an amazing audio card because we already have pretty much the best money can buy. And as for graphics cards, since I don't run 3D-intensive games, there's absolutely no need for one. Adobe photoshop doesn't require an amazing graphics card. It DOES however require lots of RAM and a decent processor if you're putting filters on HUGE images... and I think this computer will provide in that department.

Similarly, multi-tracking audio sources in recording programs requires lots of RAM and a decent processor (plus the hyperthreading helps with running multiple real-time plug-ins), but the audio card makes little difference when mixing a track.

So yeah, I think this computer should be pretty sweet for me...