A fast drive is essential. I highly recommend WD Raptors, theyre' expensive, but it's the fastest you can get right now. My new rig is an Athlon64 3500+, socket 939, 4 Gb dual channel DDR400 (yes, I know that an app under Win32 can't use more than 2Gb, but this way it can get a full 2 Gb of RAM, while still allowing for the OS and other necessary stuff to be in RAM and have a nice disk cache too). A fast video card seems to help with the preview screens (I've got a GeForce6800LE, works very well!), and those two Raptors in RAID0 are a blessing. Compared with my previous machine, a P4 2.8 HTT with 1.5 Gb DDR400 dual channel, a single 160 Gb disk and a Radeon9600Pro graphics card, this new rig is much, much faster. A third machine, AthlonXP 2700+, 1 Gb DDR333 single channel, 2x80 Gb DiamondMax 9 in RAID0 and a lowly Ti4200 is just about as fast as the P4. Mainly due to the AMD processor and the disks. Conclusion: go AMD, use dual channel DDR400, and get the fastest disk setup you can afford.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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