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My eighteen-year-old Grandson just built his second one. I don't know what the stats are on this one but do know that it is liquid cooled with a SSD and is one fine looking piece of equipment. I don't even ask, because he is miles ahead of me in technology and I used to be pretty much up to speed. Maybe that is why is college major is in this computer tech field. (He needs to learn patience, though, when explaining technical things to Grandma).

They also never put enough USB ports on the backs of these computers.

Really? Just the parts for my computer were $1,200 back in 2012. Then I paid my IT guy $300 to build it. 1 Rosewill Blackbone Computer Case $39.99 1 CORSAIR HX Series HX750 750W ATX12V 2.3 Power Supply $144.99 1 ASUS Black Blu-ray Burner SATA BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS $79.99 1 Western Digital Black WD1002FAEX 1TB Hard Drive $109.99 1 ASUS P8Z77-V LK LGA 1155 Intel Z77 Motherboard $139.99 2 Kingston HyperX 8GB Memory $79.98 1 Galaxy 64TGF8HX6FTZ GeForce Video Card $89.99 1 Galaxy 63TGS8HX3XXZ GeForce Video Card $59.99 1 Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz Processor $319.99 1 Microsoft Windows 8 Professional 64-bit $139.99 Subtotal $1,204.89 3 Day Shiping $10.70 Order Total $1,215.59 I needed two video cards because I have 3 monitors. Speaking of which, the above does not include monitors, keyboard or mouse. So all in my computer is about $1,900. Yes, I know you can buy a prebuilt ASUS for $800 but the graphics are built in, the processor is a little slower, it only has half the RAM, no monitors included and the keyboard and the mouse suck. I actually did buy a $500 prebuilt ASUS (no monitors) for a data entry station and it's fine. But my computer is also the server so it needs to be beefier.

Germans make a beer infused with helium https://fbcdn-video-c-a.akamaihd.net/hvideo-ak-xfa1/v/t42.1790-2/11381937_10153319120451280_322111919_n.mp4?efg=eyJybHIiOjQ0NCwicmxhIjo4MzN9&rl=444&vabr=247&oh=3793b7afdcc5ce094d02e1719f2047c5&oe=55AC5EFD&__gda__=1437356547_731996edfc29202760100b2e64600f78

I didn't build it. My IT guy did. He also helped pick out the parts.

Tell him "No more homemade (insert appropriate delicacy here) till you slow down and explain it so I can understand."

Thanks, Eric. I probably will try the clone/upgrade path. And yes, the computer is rather large and heavy. It is a Digital Storm with 2 fixed internal hard drives, and 5 hot swappable hard drives. It is glycol cooled and weighs about 97 pounds.

And it makes sense that they would want some continuity between different devices using their windows OS given the move toward tablets and smart phones among the general public. My complaint was that the execution was poor in Windows 8. I never minded the full-screen start menu, although not having a visible button to activate it in 8.0 was a mistake they shouldn't have had to correct in 8.1. I use my windows key on my keyboard, but the Start Button is a convention that has been ingrained in people since Windows 95. Leaving it out of 8.0 was dumb. What did bother me was that running Modern UI apps transported you to Metro-land, and left you feeling kind of stranded once you got there. Microsoft did a bad job of integrating the Modern UI stuff with everything else. And by default, some metro apps were associated with common tasks like picture viewing... so you're sitting at your familiar desktop, you attempt to open a JPG file, and you're booted to a full-screen environment tailored for tablet use. Try to listen to music, and you're sent to XBOX Music or whatever it's called, instead of Windows Media Player. Of course you can change the default applications back to their Windows 7 defaults, but it's something you have to frig with... and something a novice user might not understand. Anyway, once you correct those things, it's fine. It's not like Vista where driver compatibility was terrible and performance was just as bad. The core of the OS is fast, stable, and solid. Windows 10 allowing you to run Modern UI apps in a window on the desktop is a significant step in the right direction.

I realize you don't have to use it, and I don't either. My feeling is that 8 is perfectly usable because you can avoid the Metro/Modern UI, but "It's avoidable" isn't exactly high praise. They didn't give enough (any?) thought to integration of the Modern UI in Windows 8--to me it feels "bolted on".

It's not an unsafe choice as far as driver and software compatibility goes. Like I said, under the hood, the guts are all essentially the same as Vista, with gradual refinement and optimization with 7, 8, 8.1, and now 10. As the above video states, they've made it faster and more lean to bring down the hardware requirements. The interface is a different story. 8 brought huge sweeping changes, with gradual refinement in 8.1 and 10. These changes didn't degrade software compatibility or the stability of the operating system, but they did upset a lot of people. For a new computer, I think the decision comes down to how comfortable you will be with the changes to the interface. If you're one to embrace change and enjoy poking around a new system to see what's new, then go for it. If what you see in the video gives you hives, then stick with 7 for as long as you can.

In case anyone is interested in an overview of the release version of Windows 10 that'll be out in a couple weeks. I'll be installing Windows 10 on a spare machine in a couple weeks so I can do some testing with the new Edge browser. I imagine it'll be quite a speed improvement over IE.