Thanks for the responses; they are very helpful.
On second thought, I am thinking of getting a different Dell because I want an SSD. That would be an Optiplex 9020 Micro with a 128GB SolidState Drive (again with an i7 and 8Gb of RAM). Does that sound better, worse, or equivalent to the Dell XPS 8700 for my purposes?
I remain concerned about a loss of speed by going from 6 .33 to 8; hopefully my concern is misplaced.
