sleepyI'm not convinced it's not an upgrade. The Shadow sacrifices 2/3 of my processor speed and the touch screen, but gives me back in return dramatically better battery life (mostly courtesy of the CPU reclocking) and, despite the lack of touch screen, honestly a much better interface. Five minutes of use and I thought I'd hate not having a touch screen for Windows Mobile; ten minutes of use and I had no idea how I was ever willing or able to put up with how bad PocketPC is compared to Smartphone. (Admittedly, I'm not a fan of the Smartphone start menu, but it's nearly the same as PPC's start menu; exactly like on my PocketPC, one of the first programs I installed improves Start Menu behavior.)
The other new nerd toy is the set of 5.1 Altec Lansing speakers I bought on sale to upgrade the speaker system on the television, which had an obnoxious dropout just at the upper-mid-bass range, losing major parts of any audio run through it. This didn't make me happy, so I was planning on an upgrade to one of Logitech's 2.1 THX systems, but reviews saying that the new generation of them sucks horribly drove me away; these Altec Lansings are now the best loudspeakers I have (although they're not as good as my earbuds, I wasn't expecting them to be), handily beating the Logitech x-540s I have on the PC. That said, the x-540s don't have a wireless remote, so it still makes more sense to leave the Altec-Lansings on the TV.
Given my room layout, mounting the rear speakers is a challenge; they've wound up facing inside and towards the back wall on the arms of the futon (taped in place), resulting in one tripwire across the middle of the room but a surprisingly good surround effect given the suboptimal room.
So yay for nerd stuff days?
