Thanks all for the ideas. I will reconsider whole systems. One of my 
complaints about whole systems is that I can't find many places that 
will sell without an OS, or if they do, there's no price break, meaning 
they just wipe it but don't pull it out of their accounting to MS as a 
no-OS machine... There was one place that sold a commercial Linux 
variant installed "for free" but it was one of those made-to-look-like 
windows ones and wasn't an up to date kernel. It was a good price, not 
great, and would still involve a lot of upgrading. I was also told by 
one of the lead techs in discussion that some of the components didn't 
have Windows drivers available anywhere, so one couldn't just put on an 
old windows copy. It was how they kept MS happy about selling it, being 
a big outlet. No, there's no coercion or monopoly  here... They don't 
sell it any more. My guess is, someone found or wrote what was needed to 
give it windows and it became common knowledge...

Several of my machines are HP or such. Despite their being higher end, 
they are NOT performance machines and after digging into them, they each 
have some design compromises, either in mb layout, architecture, 
components, or such. They tend to be limited in upgrading, and the mfgr 
and often retail will NOT tell you the specs on internals. I have a few 
from the USB 1.1 to 2.0 period where I was assured the ports were 
'probably' 2.0, but never were.

Cooling has been inadequate in every system, and I've had to do ugly 
rework on each. They look like I'm under attack from the Mutant Ninja 
PCs... I may end up throwing new cases away anyway. Great cooling design 
and cheap don't go together off the shelf (but it isn't tough to make one).

Cheap also doesn't get you great drive size. I'll be adding drives and 
$$. Ditto for memory.

Then there's the unknown about whether win2k will support some custom 
piece of a pre-made system... HP, Compaq, Dell, etc are famous for 
having or needing custom drivers made nowhere else. Leading edge 
hardware may not have older drivers either...

I'm still interested in 12v PC supplies though. If I'm going to rework 
everything anyway, I might like to standardize on 12v car power standard 
and dispense with UPSes, be able to take it in the car, etc. Ideas? Links?

And then there's Vista... ugh. Yes, one can buy a Linux box form a few 
places specializing in Linux and not beholden to MS, but you pay much 
more for what hardware you get... and while some places offered to 
retrofit Vista systems to XP for customers in press releases, the sales 
staff usually is conveniently unaware of it or even how to make it happen...

Thanks for listening... ;)

-Skip
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