Playing GW and working at the same time (new computer)

I need a new computer. It will run Microsoft Vista (as I mentioned in another thread). But that's hopefully irrelevant to my real question, which is:

Is it practical to run GW and work at the same time? On the current generation of computers in my household, I see GW as a full-screen app that takes over the whole system, except that maybe you can minimize while you look something up on Guildwiki in your browser.

Is that inherent to GW, or is there such a thing as a powerful enough system (huge screen? dual monitors?) that would let you play and work interchangeably?

wait a few months and either let pries drop real fast, or buy the new quad cores. GW only uses one a a time, leaving 3 more for you to work with

and any higher end sys would let you do those both at the same time, but im not sure how to go about setting up the 2 monitors

As far as dual monitors go that is rather easy. Just open you video properties then settings then advanced. Most video cards out there support more than one monitor although you may incur a frame rate hit on lower end ones. Both ATI and Nvidea have several options out there for vidoe cards that support multimonitor settups. I am not sure but I believe tha Guild Wars only supports one monitor leavuing the other for you to do whatever you want on it. There are several topics on the web on the correct way to setup a multi-monitor system so I won't go into the details. The main thing to remember when running several apps at a time: a multicore cpu will do better than a single core cpu, and Intels Hyperthreading is not a very good choice if you can get a multicore cpu (Intel has several real good multi core cpu's out there as does AMD so the choice is up to you, just do a bit or research before choosing).

Mega Mouse

I run GW in windowed mode and am constantly switching between GW and other applications such as Windows Media Player, MSN Messenger and Firefox. My pc handles it well and I run GW on near max graphics (no AA, though.). My pc isn't exactly great either : AMD XP 2500+, 512mb Ram, 256mb 9600xt ATI vid card.

As for the dual monitors thing, I used to run 2 monitors on my system so I could have Windows Media Player maximised the whole time on the other monitor and it still ran fine.

Thanks, guys.

Stodgy as it sounds, after a bit of research I'm inclined to go with a Dell system. Dual video card, 2 20" monitors (although I'm not clear on monitor details yet ..), probably 4 gigs of RAM immediately.

And I'll probably install my free copy of Vista and keep my fingers crossed, assuming that that particular offer is still good ...

Build it yourself, its cheaper and you'll have higher quality components. 4GB of RAM is not needed, and is pointless for 99% of users.

Yeah, 4gb of ram would be useless to pretty much everyone who isn't doing some serious 3d modeling/rendering/animating or perhaps running a server. But I seriously would never own a Dell, so not worth it. Buy the parts seperate from a pc store and some of them will actually put it together for you for a small fee. Still ends up being way cheaper then buying something like a Dell.