Date: December 6, 2009 Time: 1:10:45 Hosted by Jordan Drake Co-Hosts: Scott Wasson, Cyril Kowaliski, Geoff Gasior Download: MP3 (48.7MB) | M4A (66.5MB) Subscribe: RSS | iTunes
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Sponsored by MSI. Be sure to check out our review of the MSI P55-GD65 motherboard, which earned TR's Recommended award.

Show notes
The fall movie season is well under way, and Scott starts this episode by asking the panel whether $500-million megafilm Avatar will be worth the cost of a ticket and popcorn. Jordan and Cyril suggest James Cameron will score another hit, while Scott and Geoff are dubious and draw parallels with Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 1998—a lot of hype and a big letdown. Scott goes on to relate the woes of giving tech buying advice to friends and family.

Moving on, it's time for another TR system guide, and our Christmas '09 edition is rife with compromises to combat the RAM price hikes and GPU shortages. We talk about the possibility of GPU scarcity continuing well into 2010, as well. Also in this episode: Microsoft is trying to combat Steam, we pit two 2TB hard drives against each other, and choosing between Dell and Asus for a 14" notebook turns out to be somewhat complicated.

Send in listener mail, and we'll answer on the podcast. - jdrake@techreport.com

Tech discussion:

Will James Cameron's Avatar be any good? (0:02:06)- Trailer

The joys of giving computer buying advice (0:08:16)- Read more

TR's Christmas 2009 system guide (0:14:30)- Read more

40-nm yield problems could drag into next year (0:39:28)- Read more

Microsoft's Games on Demand comes to the PC on December 15 (0:45:04)- Read more

Two 2TB hard drives go head to head (0:47:45)- Barracuda XT - WD Caviar Black

14" notebook showdown (0:58:03)- Dell Studio 14z - Asus UL80Vt