I wouldn't say that the development of new, faster hardware has stalled. The hardware is there, it's just a matter of most PC makers not bothering to use it, instead going with the older technology to instead make cheaper computers (which does make sense to a degree with the economy being down).

Back in January, I build an i7 system for myself at home. I was going to build my system regardless, but I did take a look at Dell/etc., and they weren't really offering i7 systems. At the time, I just chalked this up to the i7 being so new.

A month or two ago, my department actually had extra end of year money, so I was looking for a new computer. I've been highly impressed by the i7, so I was definitely looking for i7 systems. When I checked out Dell again, I was rather shocked to find that there were very few Dell computers that used the i7, even 5-6 months after I had last looked. Nearly all of the systems were Core 2 Duo, and cheap systems at that. Only Apple seemed to really be bothering with the i7.

The other odd thing was that eventually I did find a Dell computer with somewhat similar specs to what I eventually got from Apple, but the Dell system had far less memory, and cost over $1000 more than the Apple. That really shocked me to see that in this case, Apple was CHEAPER. Never thought I'd see that.

So at the moment, it really seems that if you are paying above $1500, Apple is really your only choice at the moment, until you get to a price a couple times that, at which point Apples are actually cheaper anyway.

/Two Quad-Core 2.66 GhZ i7s (well, Nehalem based Xeons actually), 12 GB RAM

I had a similar experience with my wife. Whenever I utter "Star Trek" or "Star Wars" she just rolls her eyes and comments that I'm such a geek.

After seeing some of the trailers, I really, really wanted to see the movie (far more than previous Trek movies), and mentioned that a number of times to her.

She's busy with projects at the end of the semester in grad school, so I was half way thinking that I'd go see it on my own at some point.

Saturday evening she was really tired of working on her projects and I half jokingly suggested that we go see the new Star Trek movie. I was surprised when she agreed.

Long story short, she also really liked it, which was something both of us were surprised by (she commented that she found it funny).

Preview of next months news:

Swedish authorities discover that ISPs deleting cutomer ID info has led to them being unable to determine the ID of file sharers, but also child pornographers, terrorists, people threatening suicide, etc.

New laws will be up for debate trying to outlaw deleting this kind of customer ID info, with privacy groups outraged.

(Not advocating anything here, just figuring this is where this is going.)

I think part of the issue is that methods of interactions with games are still fairly clunky.

Keyboards with lots of different buttons can take some time to navigate. Moving appropriately with mice is also not super efficient. Even special gaming devices for the PC are not that great. Game controllers for the Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3 are not super great either.

With controls for interacting with games that are not all that great, designing great computer AI that can potentially react as well as or better than a person would react if they were really in that environment is unfair to a human player.