Surprisingly, noise (lack thereof) is not even on my list. The white noise of fans and occasional click of a hard drive do not register on me at all, and my home environment is pretty noisy to begin with

You guys have me leaning very much in that direction now. It would be a mistake to try and integrate previous generation hardware into current technology, and you tell me the expensive stuff (CPU, RAM) won't work anyway. I'd probably keep my SATA hard drives (a 2-TB and a pair of 1-TB) and swap out the 80GB IDE system drive for an SSD.

I am more willing to accept that point of view after going through the upgrade to MS Office 2010. Like most people, I hated that new ribbon interface, but I took my son's word for it that after a few hours of use, I'd never, ever be willing to go back. And he was absolutely correct!

Well, that's kind of the problem. I don't really know. I don't really need ultra-high performance, but I want it if for no other reason than to impress people. I'm not a serious gamer -- the only games I have on my computer are (you're gonna laugh at me!) DOOM and Quake III Arena -- but I want to be able to run the "bigger" games if the mood should ever hit me. What I don't want is problems. I want it to boot up quickly, allow me to organize my files the way I want them, and be about as reliable as an anvil. This present failure of the PCI-E slot is only the second hardware problem I've had in eight years, the first being a failure of the on-board sound that required putting in a Sound Blaster sound card about four years ago.

That goes so much against my prejudices that it's hard for me to think rationally about it. I hate and despise laptops, with their little screens and undersized keyboards and touchpads and... well, you get the idea. But what you say makes sense. External keyboard, external monitor, lots of USB expansion capability... who cares where the CPU is hiding out? I will give that some serious thought. I do not have any space constraints, so the disadvantage of a big tower case doesn't apply in my case. I agree with you completely, BTW, about the quality of Apple hardware. Every instance of it I have [reluctantly!] fooled around with has been of exceptionally high quality.

So... there have been a lot of questions answered, a lot of good advice. I'm going back to the computer repair shop and get some specific information about a computer they sell there. I don't know if they build it in house, or if it is some re-branded pre-built from a major manufacturer. I tend to shy away from the big houses like Dell, because they sell so many computers that the bean counters wield inordinate power. I can easily visualize them telling the engineers, "Look, if we use the cheaper capacitors we'll save thirty eight cents per unit. On a million units, that's $380,000, enough to replace you about ten times over. Those cheap capacitors will last three or four years at least, and by the time they fail the buyer will be looking to upgrade anyway."

One last requirement I have that will sound ridiculous and trivial to you, but is an absolute, 100% guaranteed deal-breaker for me: I absolutely have to be able to use my existing PS-2 keyboard on whatever new machine I purchase or create. I will not do without my programmable keyboard. I will not do without my programmable keyboard. I will not do without my programmable keyboard. I will not do without my programmable keyboard. I will not do without my programmable keyboard. I will not do without my programmable keyboard. Okay, that little test ran 18.6 seconds from the first "I will not..." to the final "...keyboard." That includes setting up to record the macro, recording it, ending the recording, and then running the macro five times. I use that programmable function at least a dozen times a day, and many days I use it hundreds of times. I guess there are PS-2 to USB converters that would allow me to run my PS-2 keyboard through USB, right? Are they reliable? Any recommendations?

For the present, I will just keep running my existing system as is, but the next significant failure, either hardware or a big enough software failure that would require re-installing my OS, will be grounds for a new computer.

Thank you all for your input.

tanstaafl.