I was planning on building a new computer within a week, but then i saw this:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspag [...] 8500050015
Is it worth a look?

I am also interested in the Gateway FX7026. However, I do have a few questions. It comes with Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit, Intel Q9300 processor, 4BG RAM, the Nvidia GeForce 8800GT video card, and a 400W PSU. Is the power supply robust enough? The excellent pictures at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6883113058 show the insides as a bit cramped, so I am wondering if there is enough ventilation. Also, I am considering adding PCI-E cards (ATI Wonder 650 Pro TV Tuner, SoundBlaster) so the PSU and heat dissipation is important. I have no room A/C during the summer months in my home and I want to ensure that it doesn't melt down.

I am replacing a 4 year old Dell Inspiron 4100, PIII, 930Mhz, 512MB RAM PC with Windows XP Home and the hard drive thrashes so much I expect failure any day. I replaced the power supply 200W with a 300W power supply a year ago because of similar concerns and have had no problems other than its technology age. I was also able to add several new cards. But things just get slower and slower, even after running defrag, maintaining patches and anti-virus and running optimization software. I favor Velocity Micro - they have an excellent one page configuration screen - but I cannot afford the extra hundreds of dollars.

Also, from what I have read, Vista 64-bit is stable enough to run most applications I use: Office Professional 2003 and Adobe Photoshop 5.5, but I wonder how do you tell if a version requires incremental releases to ensure compatibility, or are 32-bit apps running in 64-bit emulation mode either compatible or not? The Best Buy sales rep told me that next year Vista 32-bit could be discontinued, as 64-bit applications increase and apparently requesting any other OS on a system that comes with an OS will cost several hundred dollars, so I don't see where I have a choice.

Any observations you have will be very appreciated.

I just looked at this machine at Best Buy, and I have a few issues with it.

1. Limited expandability. I would want to later be able to add a 2nd video card, and it didn't appear to have an open PCIe slot. I could be wrong, but it looked that way.

2. Vista 64. I know it takes advantage of the extra memory, but I think 32-bit is still the best way to go unless you know absolutely sure every piece of hardware/software you'll ever use is compatible.

I would put XP on it, but I'm still not 100% sure which Vista versions allow downgrading.