System Guide: June 2006 edition

System recommendations are harder to do than most people think, but we've diligently worked to keep our guides up-to-date with the most mouth-watering hardware. Our last regular update in April saw some new hardware. This time? Read on...

But reader beware: we're not going to just choose the cheapest or highest-quality stuff and throw it together and call it a system (as many "recommenders" are wont to do). Rather, our guides are meant to reflect real world issues. For example, we'll tally up prices for you based on what we glean from our own online comparison shopping engine, not vendors that we have special deals with, or even worse, MSRPs. Real-world prices, baby.