That's actually good to hear, I just ordered a Phenom II 955 quad-core, a new mobo, and 4 gigs of DDR3 RAM. I have an old 8800gs card that i'm replacing in a few months, but my current PSU is 450W, which sounds like it will be enough even if I replace the graphics card later

It's not just the wattage you need to be sure about. You want to make sure you have enough amps on your 12 volt rail to feed your video card especially, as well as your other components.
In addition, an older power supply is going to be less efficient than a new one, so if you're on the edge of the wattage envelope for your system and your PSU is old, you ARE taking a risk.

My plan, which I'm still planning on sticking to, is to replace the PSU when I upgrade my graphics cards. I think for the 8800gs I'll be fine, and I'll do a switch in a few months.

About the only thing EA can do to further humiliate Ubisoft is to call them up and say "Nah nah na na nah" while rubbing dollar bills over the reciever.

Anyone else noticed the different approach compared to Dragon Age?
With DA they put out mostly payable DLCs with little to none free stuff after the ones promised on release. With Mass Effect they keep throwing out free stuff with (to my knowledge) still no DLC in sight that everybody would have to pay for.
Yes, DA DLCs sold like hot chocolate on a cold day, but the original game probably even more so. I'd figure there's a bigger gap between sold game units and actual download users then they expected.
... or they simple try different approaches. However, with the modding tools provided for DA but not for MA, I would have thought they'd do it exactly the opposite way.

I think the reason is most of the people who really wanted DA:O bought the DDE which came with a truckload of DLC, it really was a bargain. After that the only paid DLC was Return to Ostagar which was $5 and for that price what you got was again quite a bargain. Even if you didn't buy the DDE Warden's Keep was also only $5 so it was hardly expensive.
Fair enough they are charging $30 for the expansion but it's practically DA:O 1.5 in the amount of content you are getting.
I'm sure there will be paid DLC for ME2 but at the moment they are just adding in extras and content they didn't have time to finsh for the main release, certainly nothing of the size seen in the DA:O DLC anyway. Although I am excited to see what the Hammerhead brings.

It's great to see BioWare not stooping to things like Horse Armor. Giving these things away for free greatly increases the likelihood of their major, non-free DLC actually selling.

Well, I decided to try the Arc Projector yesterday, so I brought it on a mission. Unfortunately, in the one place where it seemed it would have been useful, the game script made it completely useless. So I still have no idea whether it's actually a good weapon or not.

It seems that after my first play thru, I missed out quite a lot of weapons.
I probably have to replay the game some time later.

So I'm replaying the first one, and wow. Not only did I make my guy look like a pornstar but I tried to be a jerk in the game but I felt bad about it. :(
Merging this save into ME2 will be fun.

I finally got drown in the Mass Effect experience... Just finished the first one and started the second, while the games have flaws the overall context and ambience just make them awesome, even if both game are quite different in terms of gameplay they're enjoyable in their own way once you get used to them. I just hope the third one will keep what was good in both.
About the DLCs for ME2, only Zaed and the crashed Normandy are relay worth something if you don't care about fancy content such as armours. However the free ME1 DLC Bring Down the Sky was quite good and, that's my actual reason to post, I wonder if the Pinnacle Station is just the same but worth 5$ with the ability to keep it somewhere on your hard drive without needing some kind of on-line activation for each install.

Same here.

Same here too, I find it really difficult to play an asshole in all RPGs I have played so far.
Even in Fallout 3, just kept giving water till I am a saint.

I'm planning to do the exact same thing once I finish ME2. I've played both with the straight-up male soldie Shepard, and he's a friggin' boy scout. I was never any good at playing the "dark side", except in games where that's "what you do" (Dungeon Keeper, Evil Genius, GTA), but this time, I'll try to flip everything around. So, female Shepard, some other class than soldier, and I'll try to backstab my way through the entire game.
I have a feeling that the game will punish you for being too nasty though. Well, we'll see.