I've been taking a bit of a blog break this month, as the holiday season has me virtually maxed out. I've been hitting the lecture circuit with Patrice Walker pretty hard the past couple of days, which has been really good. We are out to help health care professionals understand the risks that come with their business, and to give them some pointers on how to stay out of trouble. She covers things like documentation, legal case studies, ethics and the like, while I cover the technology side. This year has been particularly interesting in that field with two new laws known as HITECH and Red Flags. Red Flags enforcement has actually been pushed back to next summer, but HITECH is a very real situation for anyone covered under HIPAA. Needless to say, there's not been nearly enough gaming time with all the HIT stuff, but I have managed to get in a bit.

I picked up Dragon Age: Origins, in the hopes of having a good RPG to hold me through until the next Final Fantasy. I'm pleased to say, it's very engaging, and a ton of fun. I really can't wait to get back in and play. The only issue I really have is that this game is certainly a PC-only candidate that got shoved into a console-port cookie cutter. This means DX9 instead of DX10 (or even DX11 now), among the other console downfalls. I imagine what this game could have been with the right tools, and it's really sad that the developers had to limit themselves. I guess I should jump off this soapbox though, we'll all see how excellent PC games can be when StarCraft and Diablo launch.

So beyond Dragon Age, I've been seriously contemplating reworking my whole setup here at Nordic PC. I really want to wait for NVIDIA's answer to the 5800-series from ATI, but I don't know if I can hold out that long. I'm still gaming on an 8800GT, which is starting to grow a little long in the tooth. A 5770 would hardly be much of an upgrade, but the 5850 seems to be the sweet spot. Unfortunately, that card is still over $300, and that's a bit more than I really like to spend. I'm certain that once NVIDIA's products hit, that card will drop quickly to a $250 price point, or lower, but we'll just have to wait it out.

I'm also really excited about the solid state hard drive options, especially the OCZ Vertex and the Intel drives. However, these drives are still $300+ for any usable capacity, which puts them right outside of my happy point for computer upgrades. Western Digital's 300GB Velociraptor is now down to $200 also, which makes that a very attractive offering. I've used every edition of that drive to date, and while it's no SSD, it's certainly much faster than a 7200-rpm drive.

Last, the CPU issue. I have 2 PCs I use most of the time, one is a Phenom II X2 at 3.6ghz and the other is a Core 2 Duo at 3.6ghz. Both have plenty of power for most tasks, including movie encryption and gaming, so really the hard drive and GPU are where I need to move my budget towards. This just goes to show you, overclocking is not just about benchmarks, it's an excellent way to extend the life of your PC. Heck, if I wasn't able to give my 8800GT a significant boost in clocks, I would've had to upgrade that months ago. But with a nice 15% increase, it's been a great performer.

I've got to get back to virus removals and the re-installation of a Zalman heatsink that slipped of the motherboard during shipping. Happy Holidays to all!