Another vote for AMD64 Dual Core. I've got one of those babies, and oh, it works like a dream. Much faster and cooler than the Intel dual cores. Somewhat more expensive, but still you get more bang for your buck than with Intel. chrispoole said it all. I completely agree. Some mainboards have support for larger memory than 4 GB, it might be useful to get such a mainboard. Though they still have only 4 slots for memory, the 2 GB sticks are getting more popular, and I expect 4 GB sticks before 2008. It's worth shelling out for a professional graphics card. Most consumer cards have excellent DirectX support, but lack in OpenGL. It's not the hardware, it's the drivers. The hardware is (almost) identical to the consumer cards. A 3DLabs Wildcat Realizm 100 or 200 will set you back around $800, wich is a lot of money for a graphics card. But it'll perform at least as well as a nVidia 6800GT on DirectX, and it'll far surpass it on OpenGL. And it has full and complete OpenGL 2+ support, guaranteed. Other choices would be an nVidia QuadroFX or an ATI FireGL. Starting at about $500 for decent performing cards.

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

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