Hey, look at what the postman brought me! As you might guess, I finally have a gaming rig of my own again. It’s a fairly modest Dell XPS 420 with the following key specifications:

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
• 3 GB RAM
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
• 500 GB SATA Hard Drive

This is nowhere near the current cutting edge of course, but with just a 20-inch LCD monitor to drive, it should be more than enough to meet my gaming needs for a while. The included speakers and subwoofer aren’t anything special, but they constitute probably the best sound system I’ve ever owned.

Now, before everyone makes fun of me for being an idiot, I do know that I can get a much higher-specced system for my money by not going with Dell and that this is probably not the best time to get a 8800 GT. Between the recent release of the GeForce 200 series of videocards, and ATI’s re-emergence as a worthy competitor with its new line of cards, prices have been dropping across the board, I would have been better served by waiting a bit and getting something really top-of-the-line.

But frankly, after a couple of months of gaming only on the PSP, I really need a PC gaming rig now and even I delayed my purchase for another month or so, by that time probably ATI or Nvidia will come out with yet another new card to shake up the scene. It’s pretty mind-bogging that Nvidia’s GeForce 9 series was released only in February this year and has already been supplanted by the 200 series.

As for Dell, if I were still living in the Klang Valley, I would probably have gone with one of the vendors at Low Yat Plaza, but after browsing through the limited selection available from the shops here in Kota Kinabalu, and worrying about build quality problems, I decided to play it safe and get something from Dell’s XPS line. At the very least, if there were any problems, I know that Dell’s great customer service program would be able to fix it quickly and with minimum fuss.

As expected, the XPS system looks pretty cool though I’m still a bit miffed at having to pay for stuff like that pretty-but-useless mini-LCD screen at the top of the case and the media reader. The great thing is that I expected Dell to load the system with all sorts of annoying trialware but it turned out to be surprisingly free of bloat, so I didn’t have to waste a lot of time uninstalling everything.

I haven’t had a chance to really throw anything really heavy duty at it yet and I’m still learning my way around Windows Vista, but so far everything works like a charm. If all goes well, look out for a return of PC game reviews in the near future.