The Best Computer Upgrade Ever

by Gregory Sullivan — Friday, September 08, 2006, 09:00 AM EDT

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Oh for cryin' out loud. The answer is right there in front of your face. What's the best computer upgrade possible, and one you can probably swing right now? Paul Boutin over at Slate thinks he knows. And I think he's right: A humongous screen.

Don't be fooled by all those Intel commercials: A faster CPU isn't always the best upgrade. Dell hawks its Core 2 Duo PCs as the "ultimate multimedia and gaming experience." What bigger multimedia buzz is there than a giant screen? I'm not a gamer, but I spend a lot of time with Word, Excel, Firefox, and iTunes. I watch a lot of YouTube by day and often slide a DVD into my desktop machine at night. I'm fascinated by Google Maps and Google Earth. For these applications, a faster processor doesn't really help. But you know what's better than a million pixels of Google Earth? Two million pixels of Google Earth.

You know, sometimes you've got to go with what's possible, instead of daydreaming about what you're waiting for someone to invent. A case mod with a faucet for hot and cold running potato chips and a usb port plug-in back massager would be swell, but you can get a big honkin' screen right now that'll make your friends go ooh when all of Jessica Alba fits on the screen without: Scroll. Toggle. Scroll. Grrrrr. Toggle. PageDown...

The Best Computer Upgrade Ever

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