And to counter -that-..... My first home system was an Apple IIc that my mom won at work; Promptly on moving out, I got a Laser 128 (IIc clone with add on card port). Getting tired of the limitations, I bought a 386sx at the local mom and pop. I added the 387 co-processor myself, and never bought an 'integrated solution again'. Every box I've had since then I've built myself, and had far better component quality, and far fewer issues than most (Remember AMD's K6 and all the problems people reported? Never had them. Why? I used a high quality motherboard (tyan), and installed the drivers in the correct order, not the recommended order, and I didn't overclock). I know in seems intimidating; I've seen newbies freeze and gibber at connecting all those funny colored wires from the case to the pin block on the mobo...despite having manual in hand. Can't help laughing when it happens, and watching the eyes glaze as I regale them of the 486 days, when you had to set address jumpers on your HDD controller card, modem, NIC, sound card, and usually video card. Set the timing on the CPU with motherboard jumpers about half the size of your litte fingernail...and dealing with chips that were easily destroyed by body static discharge. Today is a cakewalk, until you get to the software side of it...