Bought a refurbished Dell XPS 410. It's kinda basic, no souped up video, sound cards or the such, but the core is a huge step up from my current system. One main downside is it came loaded with Vista, which after 5 min is gonna get removed.

I had to order a floppy drive, and a dvd-rom to have two opticals for it which should be here tomorrow.

Then it is the not so fun process of flattening it, installing XP, and all my apps, and then transferring all my data, and shit from the old one. While I am not looking forward to the work, am looking forward to having a better system, esp one that only cost $500. It's not what I would have done if I could have bought/built what I want, but it is a good interim step, and will keep me able to working.

Am giving the old computer to my daughter, as she has nothing, so it will be a big step up from that for her.