KatMac,

As you have read here, there are many places you can go for a custom built machine. Micro Center and Best Buy may be for you as I am sure that they have a warranty on their product and if you are close enough you can just bring it in. Don;t forget to go into the local mom and pop shop near you as you will also be able to get what you want.

As to using Dell, I have updated and added components many times to their machines. The trick is to make sure that you have all of the drivers for the hardware that you are keeping which you can get from their website. The problem is being able to identify what brand they used (I had that problem with a friends sound card but did get it to work).

As to your comment about Mac and Word, I have not noticed any problems with the two. You can always use OpenOffice instead which is free and will save in the MS formats. The thing with the Macs though is that their hardware is specific for Apple so you have not as many choices out there (an example is a web camera as there are more models to choose from for a pc rather than a Mac). On the plus side though, most people I find like the reliability of the Mac over a Windows machine. Of course it does take some getting used to if you have used Windows all of these years.

Good Luck.

Doc