I think desktops are inherently more reliable than laptops in general, but I've had Lenovo and Dell at work and they have been solid. I can't suggest anything else since I haven't owned them.

At home, I generally build my own. Gigabyte motherboards, Corsair power supplies, Kingston/A-Data/Corsair memory, EVGA video cards, Samsung optical drives, Seagate or Samsung for HDD, Intel for SSD are my choice components from what I've used.

I've had my HP for four years. The one before that, though, I had built.

Yeah, this is for my mom, and she is not building a machine nor am I building one for her.

So I ordered the 3-D printer kit: [link]

I'm kinda' confused, as it says "In stock" as well as

"***Availability: Ships with a 7 week lead time. This is a Pre-sale item.***

Also,

Full instructions and documentation will be released on the day we start shipping this kit in mid-November.

I'm guess the "Seven week lead time" was that they first announced this seven weeks before the estimated shipping date, which means I'd get it in mid November.

tommyrot, I *so* wish I had the extra cash to buy that for The Boy. However, all our spare cash (and then some) is going towards a new furnace. He has to settle for Make magazine instead.

Yeah, I suppose buying the new furnace makes sense, as you gotta keep yourselves and the critters warm....

Now I gotta continue to learn Blender (the open-source 3-D design program)....

Also, tell The Boy if he has anything he wants printed in 3-D, I'll see what I can do.

Yeah, I suppose buying the new furnace makes sense, as you gotta keep yourselves and the critters warm....

Well, technically, we only need to replace the a/c -- it's what blew in August; the furnace still works. (And we don't "need" to replace the a/c if you want to get all Maslow's hierarchy about it -- we can survive without a/c.) But when the a/c blew, we decided to replace the whole furnace/air conditioner unit, since the furnace is 15-20 years old. It would be nuts to put in a new a/c and leave the old furnace in.

The greater energy efficiency will be nice, but yikes, it's still a lot of dough.

Also, tell The Boy if he has anything he wants printed in 3-D, I'll see what I can do.

Hmmm. That might lead to a flurry of responses, so I'll have to decide whether to reveal your impending Maker-tasticness to him or not.

Dana, FWIW, I've been very happy with my 3yo HP Pavilion Media Center, which aside from some failures of the video card (it's a high-end gaming/3D card that wasn't high-end enough, and was replaced by a more expensive card with its own built-in cooling fan).

One result of the way this desktop was configured: I'm the only person I know who doesn't curse Vista every day of its use. I think that's because with the extra RAM and heavy-duty graphics oomph, the OS isn't asking for more than the engines can give.

Though I like 7 better, I have to admit neither Vista machine I had ever seemed to have much of a problem.

I've gathered that Vista's biggest problem is that you either need a metric ton of memory and disk space or else you're very sorry you have it. And it's something you don't ever want to put on a laptop.

I've held off upgrading my desktop computer to 7, both because I'm cheap and also because I'd have to worry about programs breaking or needing to be reinstalled, adjusted, and so on.