I don't understand your problem, Nomanslander. Keeping a PC in top shape for gaming is excessively easy. You just have to:Nomanslander said:Arguments, I guess?
1. check on your graphics card drivers once or twice a year;
2. check on your sound card drivers (if applicable) once every five years;
3. defrag your hard drive once a month;
4. try and generally memorize your specs, so you don't accidentally buy a game that'll under-perform on your current rig;
5. format your rig once a year. Restarting from scratch, if you have all your drivers at hand, only takes a few hours.
Also, gaming with your antivirus software active is generally a bad idea. Not every AV engine is bloatware like Norton, but games are designed from the ground up to be rather greedy and exclusive in their relationship with your hardware. For this reason, unless you're surfing the Web and gaming at the same time, you should always deactivate your AV service while playing.
If all else fails and you need to buy a new rig, then never, EVER pay attention to anyone who tells you a decent gaming PC will run you short of a few thousand bucks. A lot of PC hardware store offer gamer-oriented packages at roughly the price of a current-gen console, with the added benefit of a much longer lifespan than your Xbox or PS3.
It all boils down to cultivating a few healthy habits as a PC user. You've admitted that you're not really computer-savvy if I'm not mistaken, and I'd tell you that this kind of attitude won't solve your problem. I can tweak my BIOS, assign drive letters and formats and generally set up a LAN-ready network over the course of a weekend. My buds and I treat refurbing one another's PCs like it's some sort of excuse to grab a beer and shoot the shit. It's really not as complicated as it seems, and going from a complete tech-related ignoramus to the family's resident IT specialist only took me three weeks.
Find a good starter-level computer class and go from there. You'll probably feel humiliated while the teacher goes over the bare-bones basics ("This is the Power button, we won't touch it until next week!") but you'll kiss the ground he walks on once he demystifies the whole physical and software installation processes.
Finally, go for clones. Dell and Alienware might offer plug-and-play packages, but you'll want and need all the control you could possibly have. These brand-name PCs are only one or two steps away from functioning like consoles, as far as customer service is concerned, which is awful.
As to your decision to go console-exclusive... You won't find any peace and quiet in these waters, I'm afraid. Consoles are turning into living-room dedicated and entertainment-focused computers as it is, and the fairly sturdy hardware of yesteryear's all gone in favour of cheaply produced hardware and software that locks up, gets corrupted or locks the user out mistakenly just as much as any other PC.
If you're expecting to find solace with a controller in your hands, you'll be sorely mistaken.