That’s with one e-mail address. With the other one, it’s ‘This e-mail address does not match any account.’ Okay, register. ‘Enter your e-mail address’. I will! ‘That e-mail address is already in use by another account.’

Okay, now I have to walk up to people in the street and stab them again and again until they die screaming and sobbing in a convulsed heap on the filthy sidewalk.

And on another positive side, at least you’ll be able to have a reason to buy Live time and not feel like you’ve wasted your money on GFW Live. And as Craig says, N+

And then all the retro-ness. And some of the other stuff that even I as a PC die hard will admit to being swayed slightly by some console orientated stuff. And maybe Rock Band. Although the price is stupid, and from what I hear, you could import the PS3 version for cheaper but not the 360.

And if you haven’t already: sign up your gamertag before some phillistine nicks it, as I found out to my dissapointment and had to make do with a vague misspelling…

Enjoy your guilt!

PC Gamer also recommended quad-core processors recently, not tempted yourself?

Good luck assembling all that kit.

No holidays: press-trips scratch my travel itch, and I never find going abroad relaxing. They’re kind of a sensory overload, I feel like I need a holiday at home to unwind after.

I’ve now obeyed the majority votes – post updated with details.

‘Course, this may be a dumb point, but it makes sense to my feeble brain, as the other two choice seem to just be flights of fancy.

Then again, fancy is fun…

Komplett’s bundle’s are maddeningly compelling: I grabbed a quad-core bundle, as did Tony. All the hard work was done for us. It’s almost like having a personal shopper.

The new system is that when you’re seen doing crimes, a flashing radius appears on your mini-map around where it happened. If you drive out of that radius and the cops lose sight of you, they give up. The more Wanted you are, the huger the radius, and if you keep running people down or bashing police cars while you’re escaping, the radius resets to be around those new crimes, meaning you have to escape further.

There might be more to it than that, I only saw it briefly.

This one sounds insane: http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.aspx?sku=343668

250 for the E6850, 4GB RAM, mobo and cooler.

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/kl.aspx?bn=10297

So basically… any of the three except with a better laptop.

Having said all that, there’s only one of the three possibilities that we know you’ll like unequivocally. Upgrade, Tom. Upgrade.

Plus you’ll find the fact it’s a Linux PC slightly annoying if you’ve never used Linux before.

Currently though I’ve been thinking about the first two options myself. I keep telling myself I could use a few hundred quid for a holiday though and it would probably be better and healthier for me.

So go for number 4. A holiday to somewhere sunny and not-England.

Thanks for all the thoughts so far. If I get an EEE, it would be primarily for typing, so the keyboard size is a concern. If I get a 360, HD may be a problem: my display can do any res, but it isn’t widescreen, so the horizontal letterboxing might be too high a price to pay for the extra definition. And it’s looking like the PC components are going to run into the 300+ territory, since more of my PC is busted than I’d thought.

Richard, if you had a Time Phone and called the Richard Smith who was just about to buy an EEE, what laptop would you tell him to get instead?

Bludgeon your Voice of Reason to death and pocket his Time Phone. Surely the most useful – and enjoyable – technological artefact of the bunch, and if you change your mind you can always take it down to Cash Converters and trade it in for one (or more) of the above.

If you’re really stuck, I’d go for one that improves job performance, so the EEEpc would be my choice. You’ve said you travel a lot, but not having a laptop on hand would be a handicap. You can get a 360 + GTAIV at any time, and let’s be honest, it’ll fall in price in the future even if it doesn’t come on PC

That’s surprising and interesting news about the battery life of the EEE. I suppose solid-state doesn’t matter much when you have to light up X square cm of cathode light…I can’t wait until HMDs take the next step up in resolution/down in price.

Speaking of which, don’t buy an EEE PC. I have the previous model, the 7″ version, and it’s not good. The keyboard is far too small for any kind of prolonged use, unless you want hand cramps. The 7″ screen gave me a headache, and I don’t imagine 9″ is going to make much difference, and the battery life is abysmal. And now the screen is bigger, so it’s going to be even worse. Plus the batteries in the EEE PC 900 review units had longer life spans than those of the actual shipping units, which means 2 and a half hours actually equals about 2 hours, if you’re lucky.

I’d go the new PC route.