SlntCobra1 wrote:See? THIS IS JUDGMENT DAY! THE TERMINATOR MOVIES ARE RIGHT! SKYNET IS COMING! RUN FOR YOUR NO GOOD LIVES!
Relax, my rampant redneck. It's all going to be okay. Even if Skynet were to happen, it would have to deal with ME!!!! I'd have all of those t-1000 units hand-in-hand on a chorus kick-line singing "Dancing Queen" while wearing pink tutus. Talk about a minor reprogramming job. Or, since it is self-aware, I'd program in a little paranoia so that it thinks all of the terminators are going rogue, so they'd be ordered to kill each other.
The final stroke of death would be to download the ENTIRE IRS TAX CODE logic and rules into its main CPU - and then tell it to figure it all out. It would wind up in a CPU-locked coma, going in mental circles while the CPUs melt down from thermal failure.
Here, have some warm cookies and your soy milk - I made your favorite - chocolate chip oatmeal.
Feel a little better now?
Oh, and as for hardware becoming obsolete versus software - the answer is obvious: the tools to create new and better software are much faster than the actual design, implementation and manufacturing of any hardware. You can make a software change in a program, test it and have it out in a few weeks. But try to change how a motherboard works and that will take months to retool. Hardware will always be playing catch-up to software, and, no, you'll never get a machine that won't be obsolete in a few years. HOWEVER: you need to be realistic about what you'll really be doing with the system. Right now, you are young and you have the time to play games and spend countless hours on-line, if you wish. You need a machine to play those games - and you may be replacing it every 2 years, if you can afford it. But unless you grow up to be a PAID game designer and/or tester, real life will creep in, and your free time becomes rare. You'll need time for your day job, and then time for dating / courting and eventually marriage and a family. You'll want to spend time with friends and family, so now your on-line time is used to check e-mails, chat, and play the occasional game. It won't be that important to you anymore.
So, buy what you can afford, and play what you can - and don't worry about obsolescence. As long as the rig does what you want it to do, it's not obsolete to you...