Oh man, this is not funny any more. Of course you could catch a botnet using that kind of method but if a virus does not use your connection often and uses a process which you trust to do that, there is no way you can check all the connections made on your system.

And you can read obfuscated code from hex dump with a... hex editor? Seriously?

Yes, but when you add the operating system that system you built is (probably) going to break $500; and I highly doubt that system will handle most new PC games in 18 months.

Realistically, in order for a system you buy today to last 5 years it will need to be able to achieve results similar to next generation consoles. While I doubt that they will push the limits to the same extent as the previous generation consoles did, and I think that similar hardware is on the market, the 4 year old motherboard and processor with a very low end GPU will not satisfy that.

I’m not trying to bash PC gaming, I’m just pointing out that it is still much more expensive than console gaming because you either spend the money to have a system that will last 5 years or you regularly spend money to upgrade your system. While this isn’t in reference to anyone on here, this is the point in a generation where most PC gamers become morons because they see PCs which are more capable than the consoles for $500, and they forget that that same system was far more expensive when those consoles were released; and they forget to consider that the next generation of consoles is 12 to 18 months from starting. I saw the same mentality at the end of the SNES generation, again at the end of the Playstation generation, and it was happening at the end of the PS2's generation.

I find that it's best to wait 1 yr after the start of a generation to buy a PC for a reasonable amount, then upgrade the GPU 12 months later. That will last the rest of the gen and perform at a higher standard than the latest consoles.

The start (1st yr) of a console generation there is always a sharp jump in system requirements for PC games as devs start to use new effects for multiplats. The rest of the gen will only see a gradual increase until the nest console generation starts.

As for the costs, the savings (as I've said before) are made on software from sales. Even on Amazon with no sales, most PC games are ridiculously cheap in comparison to their console equivalents.

I'm just going to say, if you build a PC just to play games, then you are missing the point, since it's able to do much more than just gaming, consoles are essentially toys with limited functionalities, PCs are toolsets that are open and flexible. The cheapest way to do things is actually just to buy a good PC for 5 years and ignore consoles all together since you can do work, play games, hook it up to a big TV if you want, and have the best bluetooth options, etc, a lot of people are still stuck in the past with the PC is "teh hardz" to get to work mindset which is really not the case these days, nor is it expensive for the performance and power saving you get these days. Now, if you are strictly talking about gaming, I'd say an 800 dollar machine nowadays can last you about 4-5 years(mine is a little more than 1k,) I have over a hundred Steam games and most of them were on sale for 50-90% off, that's easily 3500-4000 dollars I've saved on games that were not very old at all(within 1-2 years), you do the math, Because I've spent the same amount of money on my PS3 and Wii, but my gaming libary is nowhere the size of my PC /shrug.

I also run a lot of VMs at once and do a lot of other shit, gaming is only a part of it.

Offline an entire week? is this on a second PC or something?.... I mean surely sometime in the space of a week you needed to use your browser at least. I will admit I sometimes turn wireless off on my laptop if I am on battery doing some work downstairs just to save power, but you actually disconnected your intenet connection (at least with the PC you play the game on) for a week?

As for using paint.... I was already creating within what was actually GIMP not photoshop (I tend to call them both photoshop as the only reason I have GIMP now is because I am not certain how to transfer Photoshop over to my new laptop from my old, now I could find out but as it is about 15 year old PS 5.0 it hardly seems worth it) had I known it was going to crash sure I would have saved, closed and opened Word (I only use really paint for pixel images)

Oh, you had firefox open all week... I assume by offline then you mean Steam was running offline. I will probably change that myself, though I do find it odd you were doing the same as you strike me as the type that leaves their PC on 24h so updates don't matter to you as they happen overnight etc. (I wouldn't mind that convenience but not at the expense of power use)

Yeah, 20 minutes to download a months worth of updates... that to me sounds like a lot given that nothing noticable changed. And it's a bit different to the Wii for which I don't think I have had much more than 20 minutes of updates in total over 3.5 years. More than that though they don't just pop up when you turn on and force the update.

That last bit also goes to dahuman who mentioned PS3 and 360 have similar updates.... you know what, that's part of the reason I am not interested in them. gaming and PC integration will one day be a good thing I believe... that being when I have the money to have things like this turned on all the time so I don't have to wait for updates, and the money to have good PC hardware that can stream a signal to a TV so I don't have to game at a desk. (and naturally the money to buy hardware that can run more strenuos games than Portal)

my Steam is kinda turned on automatically as I get into Windows, it just updates as I'm doing something else, though I'm not hurting for bandwidth or computing speed at all might be the reason as to why I don't care. Wii doesn't have that feature because Nintendo doesn't allow it, so you don't get much besides firmware updates but at the sametime there is not much DLC avaliable in the US (unlike Japan, which is really weird if you ask me.) I'd rather devs able to fix a problem within their game since not everybody is as good as Nintendo first party, just look at the amount of content TF2 has gotten on the PC over the course of 9 years, it's insane, crazy insane(or countless other PC games constantly pushing fixes and contents,) you can just feel the love.

You only need a HDMI cable or a VGA cable to send signals to your TV these days from a PC.....

I'm in a fairly similar boat to dahuman. I work as a programmer, so I need a decent PC. I bought one about 2 1/2 years ago for £750 (~$1100 at the time). The only difference between the machine I got and the machine I needed for work was £120 for an 8800GT. Like dahuman, I've since saved hundreds on games compared to what I would have paid had I bought them on a console. I can play all my old PC games and can emulate just about anything from the PS2 back. Crysis and GTA 4 aside, I've never had a problem with running any game at high detail at my monitor's native resolution of 1680x1050.

In addition, I have the choice to play games however I want. If I want to sit on the couch and use a controller with the PC hooked up to the TV, then I can do. If I want to use a Wii remote in my office, I can do. Hell, if I want to install Linux and play open source games in my attic then I can. Aside from the better graphics, the flexibility, versatility and choice in PC gaming is what attracts me, and that's before you get to the myriad other things a PC can do, including in my case, making a living. The huge amount of mods and free extra content for games like Oblivion, Fallout 3, TF2, L4D2, the Total War games, STALKER and God knows how many others is just extra gravy. In comparison, console gaming seems to me to be far too restrictive, offering only a small subset of what a PC does and seemingly far too reliant on shit or bust 'Hollywood' style big budget games that have to sell extremely well just to recoup their enormous costs.

I'd say there's never been a better time to be a PC gamer than now, and a lot of it is down to digital distribution in general and Steam/ Valve in particular. It's far easier nowadays to buy a game online than it is to pirate one. By getting their games onto Steam, indie outfits and publishers like Paradox can thrive by targeting specialised niches. As well as that, PC gamers often get the definitive versions of multi-platform games (e.g. the recent Capcom games, Batman: AA, Dragon Age, BFBC2, Left 4 Dead 2 etc etc), the super-fun casual games from the likes of PopCap and Big Fish and still get 'AAA' exclusives like the Total War series, The Witcher 2, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 and Civ 5. The usual cycle of things is that the PC tends to get a bit neglected at the start of a new console generation as everyone rushes to the new platforms. By the middle of the gen, which is where we are now, it starts to swing back towards the PC as advances in technology mean that even the lower-priced hardware significantly outclasses consoles. The last few years have been the best I can remember since the late 90's and if the usual pattern is followed, it's going to get even better :).

Several things here:
* I find it interesting how you get PC gamers on here arguing how Steam is the cure-all and a major reason why PC gaming rocks, when I remember years ago, you had PC gamers railing against it and saying how Steam is evil incarnate.  Yes, I go back to heavy PC gaming, and read usenet and forums there on PC gaming.

* Here is a question regarding PC gaming vs console gaming: Which is easier to just jump into and play?  Want to know why console gaming is seen as a superior experience for some?  That is why.

* Why is it, when I see a list of the most awesome PC games on the planet, by people on forums like this, they fall into a very narrow range?  I don't see the diversity as with consoles.  I see people hype FPS, and maybe some RPG stuff (Western) and maybe an MMO or RTS or maybe another title there.  As I see it, the diversity in the AAA category is smaller on PCs than consoles.

Yes well as I mentioned it would be nice to have that convenience, but given my use of Steam has so far been 7 hours on Portal over about a month and a half I have no reason for it to be turned on running in the background. And hopefully you understand that given I have a cheap laptop (and most likely won't be buying any other new PC hardware for about 4-5 years unless this breaks) that I (well my parents) don't pay out for high bandwidth. As for DLC updates on the Wii, well first of all developers coped fine before it was possible, in fact more seem to be struggling now than they were before online.. and second of all more excuses for devs to be lazy with their games on the Wii doesn't sound like the best idea to me. I do agree Nintendo is a bit too strict on it as some games could be considerably better with only minor fixes.

Just as a side note, as a software developer myself I find the comments about needing a more powerful PC as a developer to be somewhat odd. If your code is well modularized only a small portion will need to be recompiled while you’re working on it, and the productivity gain from jumping from a high-end Pentium 4 to a bleeding edge system is fairly minimal.

Now I can understand justifying a higher end PC because of your job because it is what I am going to do, but there is really no need for one. Personally, I’m intending to create a system to run vmware systems on top of; and one of the VM machines would be for a development environment, a couple would be for staging, a few would be for testing, and another would be for web-surfing and email, and (about) the only thing I would do on the base system is gaming.