Pros: The GeForce 8600 GT is one of the most common cards around. I believe it's the most powerful card you can get without having to plug in additional power from the power supply. This makes the install easy for beginners. I'm comming from a very underpowered computer that originally used an onboard chipset (the GeForce 6150 to be exact). This card gave me a quick yet substantive boost to my computer's gaming power. The card requires a 300 watt power supply to be installed on your computer, so it's not very demanding at all. My computer came with a 300 watt power supply so I had exactly enough power to run this card. This was one of the major reasons I purchased it. Overall, I'm pleased with this card.

Cons: The major con in regards to this card is it's lack of heavy duty power. While this card provides a great upgrade for people currently using an onboard chipset, there is definitley still room for improvement. I just recently upgraded my power supply to be able to handle a larger video card, so when I decide to upgrade the video card sometime next year, it will be an easy transition. I'm a little unsure as to which is better though, the 256mb GDDR3 memory or this one, which has more memory opperating at a GDDR2. You'll have to do some research first to determine which is right for you.

Overall Review: Just to give you an idea of what this card did for me, here is some real life points of interest. Crysis, Bioshock and Call of Duty 4 were not playable at all. The Half Life 2 games could be played with Direct X turned down to version 8.1. Now I can play Bioshock and CoD4 at medium to high settings. Crysis can be played comfortably at medium. The Source engin games can now be played at the maximum settings with no problem.

Pros: It works really quick. I don't think I'd be able to find a use for the intensity settings of 3 to 5. 2 is enough to burn my pop-tarts and that only takes a minute or so. It's also super cheap.

Cons: It's pretty cheaply made and the outside gets real hot, so you want to be careful not to touch it or let anything else lean up against it. The button often refuses to stay down. This annoys me to no end. Try to imagine making waffles and having to hold down the button until they're done. Yeah, minus 2 eggs right there.

Overall Review: We needed a new toaster and this one works, but not 100% of the time. I'd say get it if you need something for work or some kind of secondary location, but get something better for home.

Pros: I don't consider myself a monitor guru by any means, but I've owned a bunch over the years and I know what I like. That is: a big, clear screen with a large variety of resolutions. I think Acer succeeds here. I upgraded from a 19 inch widescreen, with an 8 ms response time, so this was a noticeable difference right away. There are also a lot more resolutions available to me now. Games that are a lot more demanding can be set to a resolution lower than 1400x900 yet still look good. On Valve's source games, I can set it as high as I want, all the way up to 1920x1080. There are no other visual anomalies and no dead pixels that I can see.

Cons: The stand it sits on takes some adjustment. Although it was easy to put together, I needed to put a book under it to get it at the height I'm used to. Also, the buttons for the menu options are really bizarre. Not enough to mark it down a point, but I found this annoying at first use. Be prepared for first day frustration for about 5-10 minutes while you set up the brightness. Standard brightness settings also needed some modifications. It looks good now.

Overall Review: For the price ($150) I can say I'm really happy with this monitor. The size is definitley the biggest plus for me. So if I were you, I'd seriously consider this monitor.

Pros: The 9800 GT works well with my existing system and was a modest upgrade from the 8600 GT I owned previously. The card was big, but not really massive and works fine with a PCI-X 1.0 slot. It can run most games very well. I can run Dawn of War II and all Valve games (like Left 4 Dead) at the highest settings without a sweat. So if you get this, you should be pleased. The price is reasonable for a card of this quality.

Cons: While testing the card out on Crysis however, I was hoping for a little more of a substantive boost in performance. It does run noticably better than my old card, but most settings still cannot be set on high. The resolution is higher though and that's good enough for me. If you want something that will be a 'crysis killer' then you might consider something more powerful, just make sure you have a big enough power supply.

Overall Review: I sometimes wonder if perhaps I should have gone with a bigger card, but for most purposes, this is great. Just so you know what I'm measuring performace on, here are the rest of my stats: 2.6 AMD Dual Core, 3.5 gigs of RAM, 500 watt power supply, Windows XP

Pros: After remembering to preform a bios upgrade, this processor upgraded nicely. With the installation of the fan which was included, it actually runs about 10 degrees cooler than my previous processor/fan combination.

Cons: Although I'm happy with the purchase overall, it was a minor upgrade for me so I noticed little preformance boost. You may have different' results depending on what your previous setup was.

Overall Review: I upgraded from a Athlon X2 4200+ to this. So I went from a 2.2 Dual-Core to a 2.6. It might help take some pressure off my video card and subsequently keep the entire thing running cooler, but it really didn't make much difference for me. If this is an upgrade path you are considering though, and it's compatable, then by all means consider this product. It's cheap and reliable.