Thanks for your thoughts Russ and Charlie.

At this point I would say I'm about 90% leaning toward a Windows machine. The truth is I could probably even consider getting more life out of my 6+ year old Dell P4 3.0Ghz. I would probably just need to add a larger hard drive and do a fresh install of Windows to clear out the accumulated garbage. But ultimately I'm going to want a faster machine -- more for things like photo editing, ripping CDs and converting movies than for the internet and BIAB. The current Dell will work, but it would really be nice to be able to do more than one thing at a time without concern and to speed up the process.

What kind of processor would you consider today and how much memory? I was looking at the Intel i7s (860 vs. 930?) but now I see AMD has a 6 core processor out and those systems seem to be in the same price range as the i7 machines. I've looked at some review of systems online, but they always seem to be geared toward how good a system is for gaming which I am not really interested in.

-Larry