I happened to have a Novatech (UK supplier) to hand and thought I'd try a pricing exercise. They was a basic AMD Duron system which was £299 + VAT. I went through the same catalogue picking out the cheapest components that met their spec (which for JP, included on board sound) and I arrived at a figure of £320 + VAT.

Coming back to reggie's question, do you have any feelings or preferences between PC's or Macs, have existing software that you wish to use on your new machine, any indications of your usage other than Internet, etc?

As for me, I use an upgraded PC - I add/update when I need to or when an oppertunity arises. It stared life as a P133 and currently it is an AMD 1ghz with 256MB RAM. As to why, money!

OS, I run Windows 98SE. I've never have had any desire to go any higher (or give money to MS). Why Windows? Mostly becuase of the vast range of software availible - most things have a Windows version. Even for using something like Paltalk, having a WIN PC is pretty well esential unless you want to try mucking around with emulators with no guarantee of sucess...

I keep toying with the idea of having another play with Linux which I found it a bit too fiddly for my liking and I'd almost certainly still need a Win PC anyway and have no vision of going down routes such as running a Webserver where the Linux/Appache option looks very attractive - at least not at the moment. Jon