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Your system more than meets the hardware requirements. As long as you have around 20-40GB of space on your hard drive, you're good to go.
I would probably suggest you go 32bit on Vista, because you only have 3GB of RAM.
I would of said the Lenovo T40 because they're IBM. The Dell on the other hand, even though with a bit slower CPU (not noticeable from the others though), has a bigger hard drive and cost the least amount of money.
It's not really for gaming. ASUS made this workstation board geared towards Folding@Home users and parallel computing. And maybe supercomputer or server type purposes.
If you want to take on watercooling, that's great. But if you constantly change parts or clean/maintain the computer often, it's probably easier to go with air.
I based it on your needs and budget of about $600.
With what you're planning to do, 4-6GB is overkill and unnecessary.
The E2200 can easily handle all of those programs at the same time, just as those other processors. I have an E2140, and I do a lot more multi-tasking than that list.
You...
You take GPU power into consideration when you start hitting 1920 x 1200, which is the typical 24" resolution. With a 22" you'd get around 5+ fps than a 24", because it has less pixels for the GPU to process.
Either one of those Samsungs are fine. Samsungs are always good.
Do you think it will be noticeably slower if I run Windows 7 on a hard drive that is connected to a PCI SATA controller card? This is just temporary. I just really want to use Windows 7 now. I plan on moving the hard drive to one of the native SATA ports later....because I ordered stuff and it...
The key that they provide when you download Windows 7....does that only apply to the version you download? I downloaded 32bit, but wanted to try 64bit, but I don't know if the key they provided me will also work with 64bit.
Unfortunately the downloads for Windows 7 are closed. :(
It's about one inch longer than the standard ATX. I'm not sure if it's considered eATX.
So far I'm reading that it doesn't fit in the FT01. So look for a case that accepts form factors up to eATX.