I read something many years ago in a book, a small book about "going racing." What it took, how much it cost, what it was really like, etc....
[Paraphrasing here, from a book I haven't read for years, but I think this is the gist of it:]
The author was asked, at some point, how much it cost to buy a set of tires for his Formula Ford, and he replied "about $400, and they'll only be good for a couple of weekends of racing before they are shot."
"Good Grief!" was the reply. "I can buy a new refrigerator for $400! That's ridiculous!"
"True," he said, "but the moments I spend racing are really the pinnacle moments of my life. I'll remember those moments fondly too for the rest of my life, but I won't remember a new refrigerator. So for me, it's worth it."
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For me, I think it might be worth it too. I can't afford to race cars in real life, so I do all my racing on the PC, and invest quite a lot of time, thought, and a fair bit of money in it (if it wasn't for sim-racing, I don't think I'd ever buy a new PC, in fact).
I'm so enamored with the possibility of building one of these new (stripped), LCD panels into a large-format projector, in fact, that I'm finally considering buying a copy of Vista,* just so I can use the new drivers and glasses with it.
[*This is something I thought I would never consider until now, but I finally have a reason to want to build a Vista PC instead of a XP PC. I'll use it ONLY for simming/gaming, mind you (I use Linux for most everything else), so I can probably live with Microsoft spying on my every move (WGA)...but I still won't like it much.]
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