Interesting read. And hope the new "machine" is all that you hope it will be. :-)

I used to be a died-in-the-wool Dell person (havd extremely good luck with durability and average to good performance from them). But my last venture to buy a new PC (after having my latest Dell for about 5 years) went sour when I got irritated over the narrow selections for options they had.

That's when I decided to build my own machine which outperformed any option I could get from their Dimension series for a cost of over $1,200 less. At the time, for example, you couldn't even configure a PC with an SSD drive. I've had mine over a year now and very happy with it. I had always appreciated Dell cases for their ease in working in but my Lian Li case is pure genius compared to theirs.

I also joined PC MECH forums for assistance.

So, to bring the comment somewhat on topic, I initially configured my PC with 8 GB of 1666 RAM (at a somewhat expensive price). During Christmas, at either Newegg or Tiger Direct (can't remember), stumbled on a huge sale and got the second matching 8 GB at just over $100. So, what you were told about memory is spot on, I would guess.

You'll have to post a pic of it when she's finally "providing the white noise" at your house (wink).