Awful, 1/10

if you look at it in terms of what the consoles where expected to achieve the PS3 has vastly underperformed, it was selling to a userbase of over 100million customers with a worldwide regognised and loved brand. Sony have made several bad choices which has let the xbox catch up on it.

The 360 is the successor to a console which A) made very little profit and B) had a very small userbase, and has ended up this gen snappiing at the heels of the Ps3, which was miles out of it last gen,in which sony took for granted they would achieve that level of success again. Also its made microsoft a fair ammount of money, which means it to me has done very well ( despite some horrific flaws e.g failure rate).

I hate those crappy x-fi cards. Creative sucks. I had one too.artiedeadat40

i beg to differ. I've had mine since the launch and been very please.

to the Tread creator, i found alot of fourms/ information dedicated to adjusting my X-fi through google, is there any settings you where unsure about? i have EAX on, XFi crystaliser to about 80%, no SMV, no virtual 3d( i listen to music mainly so 3dsound = usless ), and i think thats about it.

are you going to use your laptop out of your house? i find it pretty amusing when people buy powerhouse laptops to use inside there house's.

I have a portable 13" laptop to use out and about and my desktop to do the majoirty of my work on at home.

When i was shopping for my mates laptop all laptops where all pretty much the same. Get the best Core to duo possible,such as a T7*** or T9**** 2gb of ram and a high resolution 17" screen, then go for a graphics card ending in GT such as the 8600GT or 8800GT ( the mobile versions ).

Dell did some ok ones when i last looked, but i come from the uk so there is like 100x less choice than in the us.

just to throw a spanner in the works, I am a undergraduate civil engineer so use stuff like AutoCad etc. Have you ever considered getting a laptop then a big screen? makes my life alot easier using a 24" LCD. Also for 3ds autocad etc etc, they all just eat procesing power, i use the desktop in the rig below and to render stuff using 3dstudiomax it takes agess if you turn everything on. I use's practically no graphical processing power in comparison. I Also do software engineering and that just requires massive processing power, well unless your doing level design using the cryengine2 which i highly dought.

So basicly i opt for Quad core desktop with a medicore graphics card and a 22+" screen :P.

Well i'm looking for a cheapish 24" monitor, and after looking around and research i think im going to go with a TN panel, i would much prefer to get a TN panel and a water cooling set than a VA panel, the veiwing angle is no bonus to me.

anyways i have got it do to about 5 choices.

one of the cheapish ones of these (under £250 )

http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/11125/xx/xx/1899/9/criteresn.htmls=11125&m=xx&t=xx&categorieid=9&cat=1899&startrow=&sortBy=ASC&orderBy=Prixwn

or the OCUK value one or the Dell TrueColour

www.overclockers.co.uk

Can anyone give me some advice as to which they would choose?