No, I'm not talking about the Christmas holiday displays that are in ALL of the department stores already this year - how early until this stuff overruns autumn altogether? I'm talking about my seven favorite words I get in my inbox:

Thank you for shopping at Newegg.com
Best emails ever

I've been building my desktop PCs out of parts from Newegg.com since 2004 - and if you're any sort of self-respecting geek, you should be too.  Why do I still insist on a kickass desktop PC, when clearly the entire world is insisting on laptops uber alles?  Simple - a desktop PC, exposed to the internet over RDP - turns every POS laptop you own into a kickass PC.  Yes, there are still times when you find yourself disconnected from the Internet, but those times are few are far between as time marches on - as we, and our bosses, are well aware.

So, with my current PC's innards pushing 4 1/2 years old, it was time for an upgrade.  Since I didn't have an extra $3000 just lying around to buy a "god box", I bought for potential.  I got a high-quality CPU & motherboard, and "ok" everything else, the thought being that over the next 4 years, everything else could be upgraded with minimum effort.  Indeed, on my current PC, the video card, hard drives, power supply, and RAM aren't the original equipment... so there's no need to go overboard with that stuff now.  My CPU/mobo should last at least another 4 years or more, and that's all I ask.

Now, without further ado, the goods:

All for around $800, after tax & shipping.  Yes, tax - I unfortunately live in one of the three states that get sales tax from Newegg, New Jersey in my case, but that's usually made up by the fact that a good 75% of the time, 3 day shipping becomes overnight shipping, as the order typically comes from about 45 minutes from here. There are key pieces missing of course - I'll be scavenging the video card, hard drives, and Blu-ray drive from my current PCs, to be upgraded individually later at some point.

I don't expect a killer over WEI out of this build, since the video card & non-SSD hard drives will limit things, but over the next year, with upgrades, I expect it to easily creep up into the 7 range.