It had been about 5 years since I’d bought a new desktop machine for my home, and with my oldest starting school this year, it was time to add another computer to our inventory.  Since my son’s computer needs are relatively minimal at this point, I decided to buy a new computer for the tall people in the house and hand down the current machine to the rugrat.  Our home desktop has always been a multipurpose device; it’s got some of my business information on it, most of our personal finance stuff, our entire music and home video/photo library, and several games that I rarely get to play.  While I had no intention of spending two grand on this box, I wanted to get something that wouldn’t need an upgrade in the next couple of years.

After a couple of disappointing stops at local electronics retailers, I bought an off-the-shelf Dell from, of all places, Wal-Mart.  It’s a 64-bit multicore Athlon with lots of disk space and 8gb of RAM.  Even more striking is the 24” widescreen monitor; I’d gotten used to the poor, neglected 17” CRT we’ve relied on for years, so I felt entitled to splurge a bit on the display.

I’m saving the setup and data transfer for tomorrow, after which I’ll get to be the hero for giving my kiddo his very own PC.  Everybody wins!