Am I just incredibly spoiled? I usually play when my husband is asleep or not home, because his computer is the one that has it installed. So I use both screens--his to play the game and mine to keep the Forum open, as well as YouTube for music, and whatever else. I keep all my dynasty records on my computer as well and it's lovely to be able to just pull them up when I need to. On the rare occasions I play when he is awake and home, he's on my computer and it's very uncomfortable not to be able to reach over and distract myself from a save or load.
I own a plethora of Nintendo systems all hooked into a television near my computer as well as a 3DS, so I hardly get bored waiting for the game to load. In fact, load times actually get too
short because I want to finish the Grand Prix/Scarescraper I started while waiting for the game to boot up!
My computer's definitely above-par for gaming, but 7 expansions have made running the game on Windows XP a pain. But after I get Windows 7 and some more RAM installed, I'm wondering if a dual-monitor setup would help anything. My GPU probably wouldn't handle such a thing alongside running the game very well, but for those with beefier cards I'm offering that suggestion if you have a monitor to spare.
By the way, I won't be disposing XP. Some of the games I have are so ancient they won't run on newer operating systems. I'll likely set the computer up with dual-boot: I'll run Windows 7 just for playing The Sims 3! Yes, I feel that I am spoiled, too.