I got a new computer.
My parents cut us a check for $500 for Christmas. My wife suggested that we buy a new computer. I had a five year old Dell laptop with Vista on it that had served me well, but I was starting to have problems with it. I absolutely have to have a computer for school because I take most of my classes online and my wife reasoned that it would be a good idea to get a new one now before I had a major issue at an inopportune time.
When I was shopping it amazed me how far computers have come since I last bought one. I hadn't kept up with the latest developments at all. You can get a lot of computer now days for $500-$600. It won't be top of the line, but it will still be very nice all the same.
I was going to buy another laptop, but I started looking at desktops and realized I had no need for a laptop. When I bought my laptop I traveled a lot and needed a computer like that. I don't do very much traveling now days, and when I do, my wife brings along her iPad and that is sufficient for any computing needs we might have out on the road.
I ended up going with a lenovo all-in-one computer. It has a 21.5 inch touch screen that is glorious compared to my laptop, 3 GHz processor, 4 GB RAM, and a 1 TB hard drive. It's wifi enabled and you don't really need a keyboard or a mouse to use it. It's like a giant tablet in a lot of ways. I have it running on the Verizon hot spot I used for my laptop.
A couple of things, though. Internet Explorer is as weird as it ever was. I've been running Firefox for a while now and have it on here now. Windows 8 is going to take some getting used to. I'm going from Vista to Windows 8 and it doesn't seem nearly as intuitive as the older Windows operating systems.
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As a long time computer and all round tech geek who used to keep up with every single development in computer hardware I always like to hear people talk computers. I used to sell computer hardware and still keep up with the tech. I built myself a few totally impracticality monsters over the years. Other people sink money into their cars, suping up the engine, adding in a hemi, lowering the car, adding in a killer sound system etc etc, for me it was always my computer 
If you need any help or have any questions don't hesitate to PM me.
Yeah windows 8 is kind of a mess for desktops. Although with the touchscreen you have it becomes slightly more viable. It's kind of a joke with a mouse and keyboard, though I've gotten used to it. If you want more of the old windows feel back here's what you can do. Go to the Microsoft store in the metro UI and download the windows 8.1 free update. Once that's installed follow these instructions to boot straight to the desktop every time, skipping the metro UI:
http://www.redmondpie.com/how-to-boot-to-desktop-in-windows-8.1-instead-of-start-screen/
I turned on most of the options in that menu actually as I found them more intuitive and helpful. Now that you have windows booting straight to the desktop download one of these free start menu replacement apps. They will bring back the old look and feel of windows 7:
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/windows-8-start-menu-replacements-6-free-apps-to-bring-the-start-button-back-1143117
Firefox is great but I've now been a longtime google chrome convert. It's very fast, stable, and in my experience doesn't suffer from the memory leak issues that seemed to plague FF. If you love your FF extensions know that Chrome has a very healthy extension market of its own, you may find there to be the exact same extensions on chrome as on FF or something just as good. The kicker for me developing web sites and programming for the web is Chrome's superior web standards compliance.
If you have any money left over I strongly recommend upgrading the ram to 8gb. 4 is really the bare min nowadays and ram upgrades are cheap compared to what they used to be. If you know a tech savvy friend they can do it for you easily. Though for most office and web use 4 will do. I can make other recommendations but for desktop use that's probably all you need.
BTW what applications do you use most of the time? Hope you have fun with the new desktop.
I probably do very little with my computer that is very taxing. I mainly use it to surf the web, for school, e-mail, and Office functions.
Thanks for the links. I'll probably make use of them here in a minute. 
