Here are the specs for the XPS ($1,088) SYSTEM COLOR Tuxedo Black PROCESSOR Intel® Core 2 Duo T5450 (2MB cache/1.66GHz/667Mhz FSB) OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition LCD AND CAMERA Glossy, widescreen 15.4 inch LCD (1280x800) & 2.0 MP Camera MEMORY 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz (2 Dimms) HARD DRIVE Size: 120GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE Slot Load DVD+/-RW (DVD/CD read/write) VIDEO CARD 128MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GS WIRELESS CARDS Dell Wireless 1490 802.11a/g Mini Card BATTERY OPTIONS 56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery SOUND OPTIONS High Definition Audio 2.0 FINGERPRINT SCANNER Finger Print Reader XPS M1530 ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE Trend Micro Internet Security 36-months PRODUCTIVITY SOFTWARE No Microsoft Office ADOBE Adobe Photoshop + Premiere Elements WARRANTY AND SERVICE 1Yr In-Home Service, Parts Labor,24x7 Phone Support DATASAFE ONLINE BACKUP Included 10GB DataSafe Online Backup for 1Year DIAL-UP INTERNET ACCESS No ISP requested Dell Printer Driver Windows Vista Premium Software - Adobe Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 8.1 Processor Branding Intel Core 2 Duo Processor This is the Latitude ($1.157): PROCESSOR Intel® Core 2 Duo T7250 (2.00GHz) 2M L2 Cache, 800MHz Dual Core OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Business, with media LCD PANEL 15.4 inch Wide Screen WXGA LCD Panel MEMORY 2.0GB, DDR2-667 SDRAM, 2 DIMMS HARD DRIVE 120GB Hard Drive, 9.5MM, 5400RPM OPTICAL DRIVE 8X DVD+/-RW w/Roxio and Cyberlink Power DVD VIDEO CARD 128MB NVIDIA® Quadro NVS 135M WI-FI WIRELESS CARD Dell Wireless 1395 802.11g Mini Card FINGERPRINT READER OPTION Standard Touchpad BACKUP OS DRIVERS AND SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION Resource DVD - Contains Diagnostics and Drivers for Vista BATTERY 6 Cell Primary Battery PRIMARY POWER OPTIONS 90W A/C Adapter FLOPPY DRIVE No Floppy Drive SECURITY Norton Internet Security 2008 36 Month Subscription WARRANTY & SERVICE 3 Year Limited Warranty and 3 Year Mail-in Service Ship Group US - System Documentation, Power Cord OS Labels Vista Premium Label Internal Keyboard Internal English Keyboard

I agree right now if you can keep your old pc working for you and wait till windows 7 comes out you will be avoiding having to purchase any upgrades. It will be out in about a year. If you have any friends that have pc knowledge likely they could easily help you install a new hard drive and some RAM, these are things I do myself but my first time I was pretty anxious. I also agree that the desktop is generally the best option unless you travel a lot and would need a laptop for that. My sister just asked me the same question and I talked her into a desktop pretty quickly, if you have not used a laptop try asking a friend with one to let you try it out for an hour or so, feel how the keyboard feels, see how you like the touch pad instead of a mouse, etc. If you have any problems seeing also consider the smaller screen of a laptop. I have pretty severe hand problems so using a smaller keyboard would be very difficult. Sitting in a chair with the laptop on your lap would require some type of laptop desk so you do not block the air flow. As stated updating and replacing parts in a laptop is much more difficult. One thing you could definitely do also rather than install a new hard drive in your pc is buy a stand alone usb backup hard drive and move all your thousands of pictures and music and other files and data to that hard drive and free up your hard drive in the pc, if you did that and got rid of any old programs you no longer need, clean out any junk files and folders, empty the recycle bin, defrag the hard drive you may find you have plenty of room on that 80Gig hard drive. I have been seeing some incredible prices lately on usb hard drives so you could easily find a nice size one for around $50, and you could use that stand alone hard drive with any new computer you buy in the future. Plus no one would have to install it for you, you just plug it into your usb port and then you can access it from your pc just like your other hard drive. Add some RAM to what ever belarc says is your limit for that pc or at least 2 gig and I bet you would be surprised. RAM is cheap. I just bought a 1gig stick for one of my computers and it was less than $20 shipped. If your current pc is a desktop I would also highly suggest turning it off unplug it and open the side panel up and clean out all the dust bunnies, that can really affect the performance of a pc. Cleaning the computer and its components ecost has some very good prices right now this search is for under $50 units but it gives you some ideas. well now you have lots of options and ways to go and up to you to make that big decision. Here is a link that might be useful: usb hard drives

Snidely - good point about not removing things if they're not causing trouble - lest they turn out to have been needed. So I have left some things that I have no idea about. I did delete Dell Stage - bc. it's a real pain - gets in the way all the time (my daughter who's had this on her laptop for 2 years confirmed that it's just in the way). I did all the microsoft updates, ran a few antivirus, got rid of what I want to get rid of, and it's mostly good to go. Here's the trouble that remains: I can't get the printer working. It's a Canon Pixma MX850 - on the home network. I did not want to install the Canon disk bc. it has a ton of it's own bloatware. So I went to Canon and downloaded the driver - as well as the IJ utility software (I think that helps the computer find a printer on the network). Went to devices and printers, added the printer and made it the default printer. It shows up in printers and devices, but when I go to print something, it fails. Troubleshooting says the test page didn't print bc. something else is in the queue. But there is nothing else in the queue. I opened the queue from my pain desktop (that's connected to the printer) - and there's no documents in the queue. Went to the printer queue on DH's lapto; - it also shows nothing in the queue. I can print from other computers. Don't know what else to do. And I just remembered that I did not see Java. It didnt come up as needing updating when I ran the Secunia scan. I am not sure which programs need it, but can imagine my husband being stumped if he tries to do something that needs Java and asks him to install. I'd like to install it for him. Got to remember that. I also have a question about Microsoft Security Essentials. Twice now it found something bad - and I selected to remove the couple of files. Does this AV just run in the background or do I also need to run scans? Thank you. Lynn.

Are you on a laptop with a possible built in microphone. You never mentioned what kind/type of computer you have