Knuckledragger

This page is not always accurate, but it's a handy resource for keeping an eye on upcoming Apple model refreshes.

Happy 4/20! (Simplified.)

USB Crunching Rocky

Damn near $100 in groceries. Seems like that should be a lot for one man living alone, but it really wasn't.

When I was running 10.5, I had XP under VMWare Fusion. My lappy went into Apple to be repaired, and when I got it back the HDD was wipe. I upgraded to 10.6 and have not re-installed any Windows arrangement. I keep around a wheezy old Pentium IV box for running Exact Audio Copy and Foobar. TBH, as much as you love your CRT, you owe it to yourself and your eyes to go take a good long look at Apple monitors. They are SEXY. Great gamma, which means deep blacks, lots of low level (dark) detail, and better resolution of highlights as well. Apple monitors are spendy and probably above your budget, but srsly, go look.

Plumen

It sounds like you're going to build a Windows box, but I must cast a votefor a Mac. I'm kind of biased on the subject. You can stay with Intel chips that way. Max will convert between just about any two audio formats. Also, as I'm sure you know, it's quite possible to run Windows on Intel-based Macs. I use Foobar in Windows to do advanced file conversion an tag editing and then play back FLACs in Clementine. Clem is not perfect, but it the best FLAC app on OSX in my experience. It supports last.fm out of the box, too. If you do decide to play games again, Steam is now on the Mac as well...