3 days before my birthday and the day I leave for Afghanistan ;[

awww man no good... I just got to start playin the beta today.... got my new computer nothing special i7 850 2.6ghz 8 gb ram and 1 tb hard driver.. video is 1 gb but not that powerful will be the first up grade

That doesn't sound bad at all.

Yeah, totally... Sounds like the only thing you'll need is a videocard if your current one is on board.

Is it custom, or pre-built (HP, Dell)?

Overkill. SC2 plays on my machine at half the strength. On lowest settings, of course, with occassional hiccups, but still very playable.

And the Beta's been running for about a month now with weekly balance updates. I'd say they're plenty on track for release.

correction its 2.8 ghz and its acer. and no its not on board.. box says ati HD4650 but the computer for some reason thinks it a 5500 series dunno whats going on with that.. but what I meant was its nothing special like custom with liquide cooled with an i7 extrem addion and like nvidia freaking gtx450 or something in it.. but yeah its nice and hopefully will last a wile.

and the reason I though this was an early release date was well a lot of ppl though it would be a 6 month beta and I personally figured they would be waiting for blizzcon to anouce it which is like october I think.

so far I kinda find things at my level kinda annoying everyone seems to just rush.

Well they don't wanna bump heaps with the Cataclysm beta and release, which will be fall. And I can tell ya, however big SC2 is, the next WoW expansion is potentially just as large if not larger, especially where revenue is concerned. It's been in Alpha for at least a year, and they can keep balancing multiplayer after release. The big deal is getting the package on retail and start selling, since it was SUPPOSED to be at this point last year.

Rushes are always a popular strategy, especially when you fight people who can't react. Since the defacto standard strategy nowadays is to seal your base entrance, an early harassment is necessary or the other guy's economy just runs out of control. What you consider rushes are probably just initial harass that you are unprepared for.

sealing the base isnt that great... lots of units can exploid terrain... and I mean rushes.. zergling rushes.. 4 gates zellots rushes or void ray rushes.. reaper rushes... I dont mean a few reaper harass a mean like 10 or more... i can never seem to hold em and all I can seem to do is conter rush and i just dont like doing it

The strategy aspect goes out the door when people are just doing a race to a specific assault... kinda lousy.