I find the best way to cure that boredom is to sit back, relax, and blow the heads off of walking corpses.  Or pop in GTA IV and steal a cop car, pull people over for traffic violations then blow their heads off.  Or play Uncharted and find some angry Mayan monsters....and blow their heads off. 

My weapon of choice....the PS3.  I choose it over all other consoles for several reasons.

1.  I personally hate gesture based gaming (Wii).  That's kid stuff, and it's just to real.  I hate real, if i wanted real, I'd just go out and do these things.  No, video games are all about fantasy.

2. Free online play.  Xbox Live can't boast that one.  And the thought of giving more money to ol' Bill doesn't seem appealing either.

3. Blue Ray player.  Truly an epic move on Sony's part. 

4. It's just the most powerful system there is.  There's no other comparison.  It's like one of those diagrams of the earth compared to the sun. 

The one drawback to purchasing a Ps3?  They cost a minimum of $400.

Right?

Wrong.

Now, this list isn't always going to be accurate.  So the be all end all here is to go to froogle.  So head over, type in "ps3", hit enter.

Now to narrow the results.  Go to the bottom of the page.  Type the price range as $200 - $300.  We can pretty much assume anything below $200 and you're getting what you pay for, spare parts or a scam.

After you've narrowed down price, sort the list according to lowest price.  Now you get the cheapest ones first.  Avoid those links without pictures an head straight for the first one with a picture and a good looking price. 

If you do scroll down a bit, you see a website called cowboom.com selling a PS3 for...$213!  WAIT.  This is a great deal, don't get me wrong, but pay attention before you go nuts here.  This PS3 is the 40Gb model.  That means it will NOT play your PS2 or PS1 games.  So if that's a requirement for you, you'll need the 80Gb model.  If not, enjoy your $200 PS3. 

If so, repeat the process except search for PS3 80Gb.  I would go with cowboom again here, for $251 you get a nice shiny PS3 80Gb that is backward compatible with all your gaming needs. 

And you thought you'd have to pay $400!

One thing I should mention is that Cowboom.com is that they sell used merchandise.  They get this merchandise from a company called EZtradein.com.  At EZtradein.com you can mail them your electronics, and they make sure it works, then sell it to cowboom.  Then they give YOU a nice check for what they think your item is worth.  This is why prices are so low on cowboom.  Like with a car, a trade in on a PS3 is going to be considerably less than retail. 

Also when you scroll down on the Cowboom page linked below, you'll notice there are several different versions in the lower $200 area, not just the $213 one.  These are the different systems you can buy.  They all come with different accessories usually and are priced accordingly.  Make sure you get elsewhere what you do not get from Cowboom. 

Cowboom is a great site if you don't mind a few used (but definitely fully operational) goods.  It's like ebay with a quality check.  I really don't mind the "used" stigma so long as I save a couple hundred bucks every now and again.