Hey not to loose out to one of you in the future, I like the compromise I struck. I bought from the Dell refurb side at less than half the price and got almost new with like new support. these are some of their top of the line 690 work stations. The support add ons where dirt cheap compared to the brand new retail side and my new quad core towers are xeon fast with 4 gigs of Ram and two 250 harddirves I set up RAID 1 (they came zero) and the support folks walked me thru that too. Although the first tech I got a few days earlier were very good, I was actually doing hald the work with this guy. See how much you guys have taught me...
But I go these two identical towers, with a 20 quality 20 inch digital monitor (eyes are finally getting old and Nancy has always needed such assistance) for just about $2300 a piece. I just couldn't walk away. So they are over kill, the one I just bought for home will last my family for at least half a dozen years. Pop in an extra graphics card and video input card, program with any extra drive for what I create (i just saw a 1 terabite drive for like $199 at one of the local stores) and I can do professional editing on this puppy all day long without it breaking even a sweat. Heck I just might try and do that as a cottege industry thing for extra bucks now and again....
And I've got top of the line, 3 years, bumper to bumper, accidental damage (dogs, cats and kids...) next business day coverage. Just about right for a shade tree mechanic trying to turn computer tech support for starving practice...
And on that same week I got the laptop I'm banging on now. 680 Insperion duel core also with 4 gigs of ram and the same coverage to. And this one only went for about $1200. Oh and the best part is they all came with the Vista cross grade. So I have Windows XP Pro on all of them and it's media, as well as I am the legal owner of an extra copy of Vista Business for each of them as well. Now these come as they were originally order unless you care to pay extra, which I did for the monitors and speakers ($59 a piece speakers, $250 for the monitor and the prices I'm quoting include my upgrades no less, and now those are covered too)
I just couldn't resist..... How could I? We are set for a while, now all we need is some money....
