Well, shoot me now!!!  I seriously need my head examined!  I ordered a new computer.... from Dell!!!!!!!!!!  :scared:

I got lots of tips of great tips here about what to look for in  a new computer.

I called  2 local computer companies and found out that it's almost as much to build one locally as it is to buy one from Dell, and with a local computer build I only got a 1 year parts and labour warranty and no telephone tech support, and I don't know anything about computers in order to wing it on my own if something goes wrong.

I also considered ordering the parts and having someone put it together. bobbystahr lives in the same city as I do and he offered to arrange for one of his friends to put it together for me. I gave that some thought and with that I would only have a parts warranty, and if something went wrong I would have to find someone to fix things for me and pay the additional costs for that.  So I decided to bite the bullet and call Dell (because of their warranty and telephone tech support) and see what their price was for what I wanted.

I was wishy washy with Dell and the guy asked me why I was hesitating and wanting to take some time to think about it.  I wanted so much to tell them that their laptops are crap, but instead I told him that I was concerned about the price (which was also true) and that I am on a tight budget and need to get the most value for my dollar and I'm not sure that Dell is giving me that in the price I was quoted and wanted to call around  to some other companies to get some price comparisons.  I had already done that!!!  Dell was my last choice, not my first when it came to pricing out a computer.

Sales must be down because he put me on hold and came back with a lower price. I was still wishy washy (because I really wasn't gung ho about dealing with Dell again.. That whole bite me once type thingy) but I saw that they would lower their price, so I worked at that!  I got a complete dual core system including a 24 inch monitor and a Kodak digital camera and power surge bar and 4 year extended warranty  for $2861.00 including taxes and delivery.  Let's just hope the darn thing lasts beyond 5 months after the warranty expires.

Meet my new computer scheduled to arrive in 7 to 10 business days. :woot:

Dimension 9200 Desktop

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor E6700 (2.66GHz, 1066 FSB)

Windows XP Pro 64 Bit

24 inch UltraSharp™ 2407FPW Widescreen Digital Flat Panel

2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz- 4DIMMs

250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™

Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x DVD+/-RW w/ dbl layer write capable

1GB NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 Dual-GPU Graphics Card

Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeMusic (D), w/Dolby® Digital 5.1

3.5 in Floppy Drive

Dell USB Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard

500 Watts Output

Kodak Easyshare C533 5MP Digital Camera

APC 500VA UPS with Phone Protection

Comes with 10 USB ports

4 year extended warranty 

So because I also ordered a camera I can take a picture of my shiney new computer when it arrives and is set up.

Thanks everyone for stearing me in the right direction about what components to get. Now if this one up and dies at least I know there is something on it's way.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi