Building my own PC has already been an adventure and I have yet to buy my first component. Starting out, I decided to break the project into three major steps: researching the components; buying the components; and putting them all together.

Of course, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. The project has already broken itself into its own three steps: finding all the most expensive components; arguing with Sweetie about the money; and downscaling the project so I don’t have to sleep on the couch for a month.

Mr. Risley’s article “Build Your Own PC” has been an education, and a couple of helpful Websites-pricegrabber.com and pricewatch.com-have guided me in finding quality components at reasonable prices. Sure, Sweetie put the kibosh on the 200GB hard drive and the Osprey video capture card. But scaling down to a 120GB drive won’t render me helpless; I didn’t have any immediate plans for that extra 80GB anyway. And I can always add the Osprey card later on, if I ever come up with $200 that I don’t know what to do with. (Yeah, like that’s going to happen.)

Scaling down the other components was actually easier than I expected. I’m not really planning to use the computer for anything that would require state-of-the-art equipment or an overabundance of system resources. I hardly ever use the scanner, I don’t play Halo, and without the Osprey card I won’t be capturing any videos. The smaller hard drive saved me $50, and I knocked off another $50 by switching from a 2.8GHz CPU chip to 2.4GHz. Instead of a gigabyte of RAM, I can do with half a gig ($71 cha-ching), and I guess the $175 surround-sound speaker system can wait.

One thing I’m not budging on, however, is the flat-panel monitor. I’ve had one at my office for awhile and I find it clearer and more responsive than the traditional boat anchor model. Not to mention the fact that a flat panel won’t send me to the chiropractor every time I want to move it half an inch. A co-worker, French, advised me against buying the monitor online. “You never know if you’re going to get one with dead pixels,” he said. French went on to explain that, while you might save money online, some companies have policies that won’t let you exchange the monitor unless it has ten or twelve dead pixels. “If your monitor doesn’t meet the minimum, you’re stuck. Get it locally. That way you can test it at the shop before you buy it.” Makes sense.

I stopped by a local shop and found the ViewSonic VG700b, a 17-inch flat-panel that looked pretty sharp as it ran the famous fish tank screen saver. I clicked the Windows Media Player icon and watched as a store survey popped onto the screen. Uninterested, I exited the survey and tried another program. But no matter where I clicked, the same survey kept popping up. What a royal pain. I haven’t been annoyed that much since the time I got the “Will It Float?” theme song stuck in my head and couldn’t get rid of it for three weeks. Why do stores do things like that? I don’t know where I’m going to buy my monitor, but I can promise you it won’t be at that place.

Now that my component list is complete, I’m ready to order, and I’m really looking forward to it. Once I get all the stuff, I’m going to stack it on my kitchen table and take a picture. I want to remember what the parts looked like new and in their boxes. That way, when they become obsolete (like around Memorial Day) I’ll be able to look back and remember how excited I was when I bought my fresh new components.

Maybe that will keep me out of therapy the first time the infernal device contracts a virus and goes into an infinite loop.