Well, 36 hours after I ordered my new Vostro, whilst away on vacation, I get a ring from the courier to say "I have a delivery of a new computer for you".

Have had to push it back until tomorrow when I'm at home and have lost the remainder of today (Sunday) to get the new beast up and running (next week is fairly busy so will have to squeeze the rebuild and reorganising of the desktops over the whole week's evenings now I think).

What was a busy week, will now be hectic as the list of things to do has just gotten larger: -

• Upgrade the Home Server
• Copy the contents over from my current desktop to the server
• Totally throw away the current build in the new Vostro and rebuild from scratch with Vista Ultimate x64
• Rebuild my current desktop with Vista Home Premium for the kids
• Reinstall everything onto the new desktops (sigh)

Even though I proudly work for Dell, and for the last two years, was the main software architect for Supply Chain throughout EMEA, it still impresses the hell out of me sometimes just how quickly we can fulfil orders (the Manufacturing facility at Limerick when at full speed is a sight to behold believe me).

Roll on tomorrow and the start of the rebuilding.

Well I've just ordered (finally) a new desktop for myself. Have been using my rock solid (but old) Dell Dimension 4500 (now coming up to 6 years old) since it was bought brand new when I moved to Ireland...and I've been slowly coming to the conclusion it simply cannot cope with my expectations anymore. It's time for it to be retired to the children's playroom once I've rebuilt it.

I did promise myself one last year but never seemed to get round to it. We're doing until the 26th (Dell that is) a sterling deal on the Vostro range (Vostro 400, Dual Core, 4Gb RAM + 1Tb storage (2x500Gb SATA)) for a staggering cheap €319+vat. Have also upgraded the video to a 256Mb which means I get free shipping.

So it's cost me pretty much next to nothing for a pretty powerful machine.

The plan is to install Vista Ultimate 64-bit on it so that I can address all 4Gb RAM as well as also steal one of the 500Gb SATA drives and stick it in my Home Server.

So this kills two birds with one stone; I get a desktop that's actually usable running vista, and my home server gets another 0.5Tb storage.

Lovely