What is your set-up?

[Roland]

Nevertheless I think the real high-end pc with each and every of its components being the best you can virtually buy, does in fact cost a fair amount more than the little weaker mid-high-end pc.
For example:
......................750$ for - 2,4 GHz, 256 MB Ram, NVidia GeForce 4 Ti 4200 (64MB), 80 GB Hard Drive, Windows XP.

....................1500$ for - 3,06 GHz, 512 MB Ram, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (128MB), 120 GB Hard Drive, Windows XP+Microsoft Office.

Maybe I'm losing my mind, but wasn't that exactly my point? That it's extremely cheap to upgrade to the low-end of the spectrum now, but that overall it's CONSIDERABLY more powerful than we need?

Look through this thread and find me ONE machine that has broken the 3.0 GHz mark. I didn't see any. I wasn't addressing that, as your post was about why there were so many high-end machines (which is true, in a sense, but overall they're actually quite outdated, and will be even moreso in 6 months; hence my entire point with that lengthy post; what SEEMS so powerful up front is actually very UNDERpowered in the grand scheme of things).

Maybe I didn't form one of my points clearly enough, but that was exactly what I was saying. When it comes time to upgrade, it's much cheaper to go with a middle-of-the-line high-end (high-end being somewhere in the 2.0+ GHz range, as 1.0+ GHz is actually the LOW end these days; scary, huh?) machine than to go with something far less. I didn't address choosing a middle-of-the-line machine over a top-of-the-line machine because, as you stated, it's FAR more cost efficient to get something about a half-generation back. But that wasn't a point I was addressing in my original post. ;)

Give it another year, and you'll be seeing 3.0 GHz machines being posted on this forum, as if they were commonplace. And, in fact, they will be. ;)