Next Ingredient: A Heaping Cup Of Competition

Competition represents the biggest food poisoning risk. Your kitchen range has to be at the right heat and you can't let the culinary concoction burn on the stove. What that translates to is a focus on great equipment and professional tournament management. LANfest had this well taken care of.

The employees who ran the tournament were top notch and took their responsibilities seriously. They were cognizant of the fact that many of the gamers there had hopes of sponsorship and big prizes. Top of the line, blazing fast PCs provided the platform for the matches of Battlefield Vietnam, Call of Duty and Unreal Tournament 2003.

PCs were provided that were more than hot enough to cook your competition.

These rigs were truly designed to help you kill your opponents in the most efficient ways possible. The system specs were impressive:

• Intel P4 3.2 GHz EE;
• ABit IC7-G Max II Advance Motherboard;
• Western Digital Raptor 36.7 GB 10, 1000; RPM Serial ATA Hard Drive;
• OCZ Enhanced Latency Series Dual; Channel Optimized 512 MB DDR pc-3200;
• Leadtek nVidia GeForce FX5950 Ultra 256 MB DDR;
• Viewsonic P95F+B 19" Perfect-Flat CRT Monitor;
• Antec P160 Silver Aluminum Performance; 1 Series ATX Mid-Tower Case;
• Antec P4 ATX12V 450 Watt Power Supply w/ 2 Fans;
• Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 4.0 Mouse;
• Logitech 104 Key Keyboard.

In addition to that, D-Link provided the networking equipment (a DES-1026G 24 Port 10/100 Layer 2 Switch) and Logitech even threw in an Extreme PC Gaming Headset and Extreme 3D Pro Joystick for good measure.

All this talk of high-end hardware leads us to another important ingredient: Sponsors.

Sponsors went crazy and brought a boat load of prizes for the raffle.