Princess, you have made the purchase so for your own peace of mind do not start second guessing, it simply spoils the enjoyment. Look forward to it's arrival and decide before it arrives that you will overcome the differences you will find with Windows 7 and enjoy all the benefits.

You can sit there till the cows come home wondering and worrying about the 'right' parts to include or exclude. There is no perfect computer and what you have bought will no doubt do you sterling service.

We mere mortals do not possess the wherewithal to be able to differentiate between various components with any degree of certainty. Most of us want a Cadillac but our needs can be met with a budget Chevrolet with perhaps a couple of extras added unless we do have specific needs like graphic design or other intense requirements.

I'm NOT an expert. LOL

I hope, I did the right thing, too.

I just ordered a CPU with a separate monitor from Costco.

I specified what I ordered in the thread below "Techies, advanced users, help".

I kept agonizing which to order. My budget was $1,000. Finally, I decided on a computer from Costco (3 month return policy. No questions asked!). I was tired of all the sales people telling me different stories. A Quad core, 8GB,1TB with a HUGE 28" monitor. The entire system, with all the charges, tax, etc. in place came to $958. I hope I like it ;)

Actually, Costco had one in their store that would have been great (HP, Quad Core, 6GB, 640 with a 23" monitor for $799!). Had it not been for the shiny screen HP monitor, which messes with my eyes, I would have purchased that one.

I personally would never go with Dell, first of all for what you get they want twice more money then all the others, plus if you go to all the techie websites, that sell new and refurbished PC's 98% of refurbished are Dell's that tells me an awful lot about Dell!(they were returns) I prefer HP/Compaq with AMD processor, and luv the 24/7 tech support for life free,either by chat or phone, whereas Dell makes you pay and boy do they ever!and they were nasty to my niece on the phone when she ask for help on her Dell, my first experience with HP tech support was for a driver download, had it in e-mail in about 5 mins. (the link)

Susieq the idea of a help forum is to offer assistance and encouragement, you post did neither.

If you ever walk into most offices you may be surprised to note that so many use Dell computers. When those same Dell computers get older they are replaced, often with more Dell computers. Hence the large numbers offered on the used market.

Polarprincess has made a purchase and no doubt bought a nice machine so any helpful comments to stop her wondering if she made a mistake are what should be offered. Of course if an obvious mistake was being made then that would be fair comment. Yours was not. Sorry to be blunt.

A few years ago the used computer market was swamped with PIII computers because it had proved to be a good, solid machine for the office environment. Once they reached the end of their useful time they were replaced and offered for sale.

My wife and I each have dell computer that we have been very happy with for over 3 years now. We liked them so much that we recommended them to my daughter who now has 2 dells in her family and they are extremely pleased with them. I have read lots of good reviews about the dell studio machines - both laptop and desktop - and think Polarprincess will be very happy with her machine. I have heard complaints about dell service but the few problems I've had have been solved quickly and easily using their online chat service.

Please don't confuse the Dell Business/Office product line with the Dell Home product line as they are apples and oranges. I'm posting this on a Dell "Office" model and it doesn't hold a candle to any home system I have owned or worked on.

As far as reassurance after a purchase, it's a little late. I do agree though that once you make an informed decision just sit back, live with it and enjoy. In life there are only three things that are a certainty; death, taxes and government will screw things up.

No problem here with a member posting negatively as long as it is done politely and with respect. Opinions, positions and information, both positive and negative, are needed for one to formulate a proper decision. A member just has to be prepared to back up his/her statements with facts.

DA

to owbist...I thought a forum was to be helpful by telling the truth, from experience, not to sugar coat everything, simply to be encouraging for others to go out and make mistakes,instead of good informed decisions, I simply stated facts, my facts based on experience, and research.. my post was not negative to any particular person, only to Dell, which as I stated I would not ever waste my money on... and then turn around and be asked to pay for tech support, I think not!!! retired here way more careful, where I spend my money!! which is done only after thorough research is completed.

Thank you everyone and obist your note was sweet. My sister said she was able to cancel her dell order the day after she ordered it, so I was thinking maybe I still had a chance. My current computer is a dell and I have had it for 7 plus years with no issues ever, and maybe I just got lucky, but anyway, I just wish I had maybe left it at 4 to 6 gigs instead of the 8 and maybe 500 gig hard drive would have been enough and I could have went with a bigger processor.I also worry about the mini tower because aren't they at higher risk for crashing. Of course I didn't notice it was mini till after the fact.

polarprincess-
You're fretting way too much. You didn't make a mistake. What you ordered is just fine. You have minimal needs and what you bought has specs that are more than enough to handle those modest needs for a long time. I suggest you enjoy your new computer and quit second-guessing yourself to death. If you cancel this order, what are you going to get instead? There will always be someone to tell you something is bad about your choices, and you will probably find something to fret about if you change your mind again.

I have owned many computers, including four Dells, and never had a problem with any of them. The oldest one was bought 9 years ago and it still is cooking along. For every computer brand made you will find people who say it is terrible. In my experience, Dell has been more reliable than any other brand I've bought. And, if Dell made such bad computers, why have they been so successful for so many years? So quit worrying about ordering from them...you can get a lemon from anyone.

As for mini-towers, why would they "crash" more frequently? Because they have less space for the components/ If that were true, laptops would be crashing left and right. My view is that you are having normal buyer's remorse, and that everything will be fine once you get your new computer.

The only thing I would advise you to do is to get yourself an external hard drive so that you can back up everything onto it. It sounds like you may store things only on your computer's hard drive, and that's a recipe for disaster. I go on the assumption that all hard drives will crash sooner or later and I want an insurance policy. I recently bought a 500GB Toshiba hard drive for about $100 that is quite compact and has backup software already installed so that backups are painless.

500 Gigs would have been more then enough!

I think you will be happy with it.

How much storage is 1 TB--1 terabyte--on a hard drive?

On a hard drive, a terabyte, abbreviated TB, is 1012 = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes of information. That is 1,000 times a gigabyte (GB) or 1,000,000 times a megabyte (MB), which is a million million bytes.

To think practically how much information a terabyte of disk space holds, let's assume we're storing text from magazine pages on a computer that does use one byte per character. At an average 5,000 characters per page, 1TB of disk space could hold 220 million pages of text!

If it is a done deal I say don't worry about it. I bought a 42 inch LCD flat screen TV and lost sleep over it before and after I bought it. I really lost sleet the first night I had it home. It's to big, to big all night long, it's to big. Got up the next morning, turned it on and said it's not to big. It was perfect. All of that worry for nothing. LOL

BTW it's mostly personal choice. I have never bought a custom PC because I don't know what I need/want. My first store PC was perfect, the others have been also. The last time I bought one I took a copy of the specs from my old PC, made sure I had one as good. turned out it was better than the last and a whole lot cheaper. I guess my next one will be Best Buy and I don't like them, but there is no electronics store left in town that sells them except
WalMart they know nothing about PCs.

i actually just bought an external hard drive but i couldn't get it to work with my computer. It wouldn't let me click on "start" so it is sitting in the box, so i hope it works with the new computer. It was actually the computer guy who recommended the 1 Tb to me because i plan on storing 10 years worth of video on it, and plan to keep adding, and i have hundreds of songs, and thousands and thousands of photos, so i don't know why i am bothered by it. i had heard storing HD video uses ALOT of hard drive space. I have been out of space on this computer for a long long time, and as i said am running on virtual memory. I plan to have the next computer for many years as i have had my current one, it was only $50 dollars more for the 1TB hard drive, and $40 more to upgrade the memory, so it is not like i am out a huge amount of money- but yeah maybe it is just buyers remorse. i am not going to cancel the order because i don't want to go through having to order again, but i will regret not upping the processor at least until i get it and see it works fast enough. You would think the dell people would have been trying to sell me a faster processor- more money for them, but as i said 3 of them said it would be adequate so i guess i have to trust them, so i can quit thinking about it. thanks for your replies- i appreciate all of them!

I have to ask why would you want to store all of that stuff on your pc? why not use dvds, usb flash drives or external hard drives instead of loading up the hard drive on the pc? That just makes your pc have to deal with all those thousands of big files and man how long it must take to do any kind of scans. Plus the risk of the one hard drive failing and losing it is a huge risk indeed. If nothing else buy some flash thumb drives and store your stuff on them, put all music on one, all movies on another etc they are quite cheap and come in large storage sizes and you can carry them with you easily to share.
Just my opinion but I would definitely not put all that on my new hard drive.And would do a multi storage option so if one failed all would not be lost.
I also store a lot of my files online in online storage lockers, for example adrive gives you a LOT of storage space free.
http://www.adrive.com/

Polarprincess, you will be happy with your new Dell. Like most of us, you are second guessing yourself. I am doing the same thing right now, not with a computer, but countertops. LOL I have always had custom built computers, and always been very happy with them. However, right now, my Vista is a Dell, and I love it. My husband has a Dell, he likes it, my grandaughter has a Dell and is very happy with it. Right now, there are 3 Dells set up in this house, and they all work perfectly. Yours will be just fine, it sounds like a very nice computer. Good Luck to you, and enjoy that new Computer.

When I first bought a PC someone told me it's like buying a car. They all do the job, you buy one that has what you want on it.

Mass storage on a local H/D is truly a mistake. A user is one click of the clock away from disaster and disappointment.

I support sub-ordinate media backup, but remember they are not even 100% reliable. If files are absolutely critical to you then multiple backups, and perhaps cross media backups, would be in order.

DA

We love our Dell desktop and it has worked beautifully for 4 years now.

Pam

Any computer can be considered unworthy by someone, because a lot of it is nebulous and personal taste. For example, for my previous computer purchase, I bought a cheapie laptop because I had all the bells and whistles I needed at work so the last thing I wanted to do at home was use a computer. So I just bought something for e-mail and online shopping at home. THEN, I lost my job. Now I work from home a ton, and my DVD player that was attached to my TV went out and I can't afford a new one so I am using my laptop for watching movies, which I also do a ton more since I replaced expensive cable that I didn't care much for with Netflix. I use this as an example because even though you maybe bought a little more than you think you need, you never know where your life will take your or where technology will take us in the future. I know I paid 100 dollars more for getting a new Sony laptop, with the sole reason being I didn't have to struggle with the keyboard the way I did with all the other ones I tried, and I know I will be typing a ton in graduate school. So I have some remores at paying 100 more for a computer that is not that much better than the cheaper ones, but I KNOW I will be thanking myself later when I am knee deep in my doctoral disseration and am spending hours on it. It's very hard to know how to parcel out financial priorities in these difficult times, and THAT I DO think is worth discussing on a forum. I say, if you CAN, pay a little more to get a little more which will stand you in good stead for the future. But other people will say, get the minimum and live with it. Neither school is right or wrong. But once you have decided, own your decision and don't look back, IMHO. Because you are just going to get conflicting advice from the two camps til the cows come home. If you made what YOU thought was a good decision, stand by it. . . . Of course that is just my opinion, lol!

polarprincess-
Your new external hard drive will probably work just fine with your new computer. There are mechanical and software issues I won't go into that can make new hard drives and old computers incompatible, but would pose no problem if they are both recent.

thanks for the encouraging words everyone. My main reasons for not using thumb drives flash drives etc is that i am very aware that they can fail as well. Another reason is that i lose things easily. Another reason is that when i want music or a photo or whatever, i dont want to try to find the drive it is on to then upload it to use it. I want to just go into my hard drive and have it now. I will make sure i have backups of everything important in online storage or on one removable drive, so I am not using my computers hard drive as the sole storage, but i also do not want to not have my files there either.

With a 1TB hard drive, you won't need to worry about space for a while :-)

Princess, I don't understand some of this, but I do know I have thousands of photos and duplicates and that much or more music in their orig format and in MP3 in a couple of places and I don't have a problem with it. When I right click on C drive it shows I have used less than a quarter of the space on my PC. If it causes the computer to be slow I am not aware of it. I also keep all those items backed up on an external drive, it's to bad yours doesn't work it is a very easy process. I always order restore CD's but don't think Dell has them on one CD. Good luck and congratulations.