Shazzamm!

I went away for a couple of weeks and all kinds of cool stuff started
happening.

You're threatened with a suit from an anonymous asshole - who really
isn't all that anonymous.

Peoples is telling you to buy a PDA to view photos with - as though a
three inch screen is demonstrably better than a two inch screen.

Some peoples is encouraging you to buy a used laptop for the same
money as a new laptop - because it was better in it's day.

Golly - I do love the Wreck.

I'd go for that low end Dell and add in a few treats.

Pay for the DVD burner, which is cheap as **** if'n you buy it up
front and allows you to burn 4.5 gb worth of stuff. Get that extra
memory when Dell is running the special on it. Otherwise, buy the
aftermarket. It's all about dollars per byte.

Akshully, if'n it were me, I'd position myself to eliminate the
desktop and spend about two grand on the laptop. Keep the screen you
have, if'n it can be color corrected. Get yaself a nice port
replicator and you can keep using the keyboard that you like and the
mouse that you like - and you will have two screens to work on - which
can be a great help. The existing desktop will make a nice storage
device - IDE drives are cheap as dirt right now.

I work with two screens and would never go back.

There is one word of counsel that I would give to you -

"Bidness"

Do not buy on the Home/Home Office side of the Dell website. If you
do, you will be relegated to non-english-speaking-peoples as your
resource for customer service/tech support.

The "Bidness" side of the Dell website will kick you right into the
section where you will deal with Americans who don't speak English -
you will be better off - because you will be used to that.

I know, it's a slippery slope - you have a target figure for dollars
to be spent - get over it. It is way past time that everyone switched
to laptops as their main computer - if you don't bite the bullet now -
you will bite it bigtime in the future.

I think that you could make a good argument for giving your current
desktop to a deserving family member - thus giving them somewhat
current technology whilst propelling yaself into both currency and
beyond.

A couple of caveats - if you buy 512mb ram, make sure it is all on one
chip - it will cost you more but your upgrade path will be better
(same goes for 1gb - I wouldn't buy a box with less than a two gb
potential).

Second - get a video card that is twice as nice as the best that you
could forsee needing (DAMHIKT).

Thirdly (I lied) get a bigass hard drive and make it spin at 7200 -
you won't regret it.

I bought most of the above from Dell for $1750.00 American and I like
it a lot.

YMMV.

yippeee!



Regards,
Tom.

Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.)
tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)
http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1