[byrony]

In general, Dell is a well engineered and well supported product. Of course, I'd suggest getting 512RAM because Windows XP will run better. You probably want to get a new monitor also - I can't imagine using one that's 6 years old.

The last dell I got had a floppy but I never use it. The best way is to transfer the data to the eMachines and then network the two together.

I'm not a big fan of MSN - I believe the new Dell's will give you earthlink for 6 months.

Get broadband. It's definitely worth it and then you can get rid of MSN

[Landru]

I bought a 4500 a year ago & have been *very* happy with it, overall.
Just a couple suggestions:

1) Get a CD burner when you place your order & Dell will cut you a great deal (~$100 extra). Copying CDs is a real piece of cake with a burner in your spare drive.

2) Get the "In Home" warrenty!!
No ther way to go. On my system one of the CD drives went haywire & Dell sent a techie to my home in a matter of days, swapped me out and had me up immediately. Money well spent, IMO.

The poster who recommended 512RAM was right also, IMO.
Dell will upgrade you for little $$ & that'll markedly improve the quality of your computing life.

...& WinXP has fax etc built in, too.

[chilepepper]

Sorry to disagree but I for one wouldn't buy a DELL for this reason: DELL tends to design things DIFFERENTLY. We had a major, freakess lightning strike a couple of years ago (NEVER happened before where i live), and didn't have lightning protection. (Even though we got UPS out the gazoo)

SO the high volt comes in over the MODEM LINES and fries about a dozen DELLS.

DELL isn't at fault for THAT (we should have had protection there as well)

What I do fault them for is that they had SPECIAL NON-STANDARD power supplys feeding SPECIAL NON-STANDARD motherboards, so we got screwed with these machines... had to go the DELL and pay $80 for a simple powersupply!

Keep your DELLS. Don't like GATEWAYS either for reasons I'd rather not go into now, suffice it to say Gateway sells substandard, corner cut hardware. Them is crooks IMHO...

What brand? Believe it or not, i'm actually pretty happy with Hewlett Packards (i didn't think i would be, but the four or five we bought to replace the DELLS have been great), but clearly YMMV.

[Old Professer]

I have a new monitor; I went to the online store for Dell and discovered the unit I am considering does have 3.5 floppy.

[LADYAK]

My XP is slower than all get out switching from each user and booting up etc....I will check the amount of RAM...thanks for the tip.