I never tried to argue that "bigger/badder" hardware is not good... to the contrary, if I could, I would personally buy the biggest and baddest hardware that I could get my hands on if I was building a new computer... but thats because I'm crazy (would explain the Radeon 9800 pro I bought when it first came out... or the various other components that I blew my money on... would also explain why I'm usually broke). All I'm saying is, when building a computer, a person needs to be smart about it and weight the pros and cons. I completely agree that a crap load of ram will always be useful... but Scale needs to think about how much video editing he's going to be doing, and see if it justifies 1gig of ram. Or if it justifies getting a kickbutt cpu. For the general user, I don't see any problems using 512MB of ram with a Athlon XP 2700+ cpu. It would run fine, and last for quite a few years, and isn't too expensive. However, if Scale is going to do hardcore video editing (it doesn't sound like it to me... but I could be wrong), then getting 1+gig of ram and a nice 64bit cpu may be worth looking into. After quitting the computer hobby and looking back at how much money I blew and what my stuff is worth now... I just cannot justify buying computer stuff when you don't need it... especially if its not going to be worth anything a year or two down the road. At least with an expensive aquarium pump you can still sell it for a decent price after you decide to upgrade your tank
Oh... and yeah, I basically assumed that any mobo made in the past two years utilize dual channel ram... probably something I shouldn't have assumed.
-Richer