I built my own windows pc (and one for my partner) using parts from a local www.pcclub.com store. The machines have been working great overall and it was nice to be able to hand select the components (I got a roomy enermax case for mine that makes tinkering with the machine a breeze). Installation was rather straightforward and really the only tough part was setting the front side bus speed properly in the BIOS (but a quick call to pcclub resolved that) and installing the drivers for the onboard sound module. I got a lesser case for my partner's machine but the power supply blew out after only a month or so (but fortunately pcclub replaced it at no charge and the new one has been working fine) so I would definitely recommend getting a beefy power supply. Carrara is a bit finicky when it comes to video cards (especially those from ATI even though they are my personal favorite); sometimes you have to get just the right set of drivers (and not necessarily the latest ones) and I don't think I've ever been able to get opengl support working on an ATI card. I run dual boot with win98se and win2k server and many apps (especially adobe apps like after effects and premiere) are much more stable on win2k but that hasn't really been the case with Carrara (somewhat to my surprise). It's too bad really that render times on the mac are so slow by comparison since there are a lot of things to like about the new macs and OSX. I've certainly been getting a lot of use out of my eMac (among other things, it makes a great office stereo!) but I try to avoid using it for anything that needs to render (except final cut pro which I love). If Apple could just get faster cpus I think they'd really be on to something.