I couldn't resist any longer, I needed to update my home PC's peripherals to the 21st century.  It’s so hard for me to stop being cheap at times, but I convinced myself this was an investment in the future; a way to entice myself to work on some personal programming projects to enhance my skill set.

The biggest change was the new 22" Acer LCD wide screen which replaced both my 20" Dell CRT and 21" Sony CRT.  I was a little worried about going back to a single monitor, but the shear size of the new display makes up for it.  This new screen is very bright, clear, and inviting - best money I've ever spent on a display device.  My ATI Radeon X850 just needed a driver update, and I was off and running in 1680x1050.

My second favorite upgrade is the new keyboard and mouse.  I replaced my old Logitech keyboard and mouse with a wireless Microsoft Natural keyboard/mouse combo.  I really like the wireless freedom for the mouse, and the new natural keyboard feels absolutely great.  I can finally type without making way too many typos - I can only really type on natural keyboards anymore (my last one broke so I was stuck with the regular old school Logitech one for a while).

I also replaced my old Logitech 4.1 speaker system that had a broken front left channel with a new Logitech 2.1 system.  I found that the two rear speakers were hard to position, so I opted to just drop them on my new speaker system.

And to further reinforce the newness/change in my home PC system, I turned my desk 90degrees and doubled the amount of RAM in my PC.  My desk now has lots of room on it mainly from removing the two hulking 20th century CRTs.  Maybe next summer I'll get a new dual or quad core system with Windows Vista, which since I actually have decent peripherals will be that much better.  Man, I love this keyboard.