Being a university student myself (CS and engineering, robotics), imho it's very useful to learn solidworks. It helps the mind think better in space and understand mechanics. The open-source alternatives really doesn't quite cut it when it comes to cad... As for programming, your setup with eclipse and visual c++ sounds good. However, it may beuseful to keep programming at a "notepad"-level for starters (I don't really know what level the students are at?) One final note though, as stated by several others here, why XP? Windows 7 is here and it's looking good, just make the switch.

Check out your local university or other higher education for a introduction to electronics course. A prof with real knowledge and electronic experience is going to teach you what you're asking for, a basic knowledge of how this stuff works (like electronically, not conceptually). After all, this is how most people who work with this stuff learns it... These courses are free (except for a fee to be approved as a student, less than us$100 at my university) in many places, i.e. where I live, in Norway. (public universities) Also, stick with old stuff that actually has the components seperately - it helps to be able to see actual, physical components when you're trying to figure out the circuit as a beginner.

I want lower prices on good SSD units. How long do I have to wait?

I do voulenteer work for a non-profit organization helping high-school kids with their homework, and with the kids who aren't that confident with math there's always these really simple mistakes - at least when I'm sitting there helping them/watching what they're writing. Suddenly 4+4 isn't 8, and 1/2 isn't 0,5... when I point these things out, it's obvious that they really do know these things. They're just stressed out, and that's what keeping them from performing. For a lot of these kids the same thing happens during tests. They kind of blank out and do weird things that they wouldn't normally do (I'm still talking math here...). I would imagine that standing there with lots of psychologists observing you counting these squares would make people stressed out... I for one would wonder what trick they were trying to pull - how is this a trick question? No wonder it takes someone who's not confident with math a little time to answer. But hey, this is perhaps exactly what they were trying to show with all this. So there ya go.

These days I rarely see people putting together a system with less than 3-4 GB of memory, often as much as 8GB - and this goes for laptops as well. So if windows 7 wants to do something useful with all this memory, I say let it. My laptop runs W7 with "only" 2 GB of ram, but it runs everything I throw at it in a heartbeat. It should be mentioned that I'm not a gamer at all (except for the occasional round of minesweeper ;)), but still; your game won't utilize those 8 gigs of ram, at least not for anything really useful... Smoother user experience by caching those files accessed on a regular bacis is a big plus in my book.

They could obviously sell all this stuff on ebay (or the like) with thousands of potential buyers who would never swing by this warehouse and pick something up. And probably at higher prices, at least on average. How come they aren't? Does anyone know if there's someone behind this store funding it? Or are they actually making good money with this store?