When my dad says, "sheesh, your computer is slow", I know it that "The Time Has Come To Upgrade" is here :) Savable parts: hard drives, an "off-brand" ATI card [recent vintage, I'm thinking 900 or 9000 -- whatever their numbering scheme is nowadays...], creative labs "audigy" sound card, cd-rw drive (don't think it is an LG drive) and the "external" stuff listed below. "what I want do do with [linux on] my computer": -- video editing -- play the latest games -- web maintenance -- some minor development work [most likely graphical in nature, but some "server" daemons as well...] -- playing DVD movies [actually, this is an afterthought as I recently purchased a DVD player for my TV, but I'll bet most "systems" come with a DVD already, so "why not use it?"] [external] hardware that I want to use: * Sony TRV-30 [video camera]; this is a mini-dv camera, so it has firewire [while I have firewire cards, both dedicated and as a port on the audigy card, I suspect most modern boards have this "built in" nowadays] * canon "lide-30" scanner * a generic taiwanese mp3 player [comotron]; also acts as a usb memory card reader/interface for the additional memory for the player * canon s-600 printer [color inkjet] * Ximeta 80gb "NDAS" [network "direct" attached storage -- don't ask...] Most of the above "works" to some degree or another on my current system, but I suspect the support will be better for most of this on SuSE 9.0 [which will also be "on the list" to get while getting the hardware] Would anyone recommend a "name brand" pre-built computer [i.e., dell or HP/compaq], or is the thinking still "put it together yourself from component parts picked up at the latest computer swapmeet"? -- Yet another Blog: http://osnut.homelinux.net