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 shit 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)
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