Computer purchase waffling

[valis2]

So. Many of you know that I am unnaturally attached to my beautiful amazing giant Dell XPS computer. It is huge and noisy and I absolutely adore it.

Sadly, I purchased it in October 2003, and I am finally beginning to have issues with keeping up with things. Don't get me wrong, I am still spoiled by it. I can play WMP, edit up to 50 photos at a time in PS Elements, have 40 tabs open in Firefox, be working on a 200 page Word document, chat using Trillian, work on eBay listings using TurboLister, and have a scan running, all at the same time. However, if I try to edit more than 50 pics, PSE crashes, and with Firefox's recent memory hogging ridiculousness, it's getting to be a bit of a pain.

See, I got super lucky when I bought this system. I bought it as Windows XP was coming out, and therefore it has had a stable OS for a very long time. Now that 7 seems stable, I am wanting to get a new system now and enjoy another long stretch of stable OS happiness with a new computer. Even though my XPS is adequate (and sometimes more than adequate), it's starting to show its age. Still, seven years is a great run for a computer. I've added RAM and put in a new vid card, but other than that it's still as I bought it.

So here is my waffling issue. I can purchase one of two computers. One is the last gasp of the Dell XPS 9000; I believe this is the last weekend it's available, and it's discounted. The other is the new model, the XPS 9100.

Here are the stats for the 9100 I'm interested in:

PROCESSORS Intel® Core™i7-960 processor(8MB L2 Cache, 3.20GHz)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
MEMORY 12GB Tri Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz - 6 DIMMs
MONITOR 24.0" Dell ST2410 Full HD Monitor with VGA cable
VIDEO CARD ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5
HARD DRIVE 1TB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache
OPTICAL DRIVE Dual Drive:Blu-ray 6X Combo Drive and 16X DVD+/-RW w/double layer write capability
WIRELESS Dell 1525 Wireless-N PCIe Card
SOUND CARD THX® TruStudio PC™
WARRANTY AND SERVICE 2 Year Basic Service Plan
OFFICE SOFTWARE Microsoft® Office Home and Business 2010

9000:

PROCESSORS Intel® Core™ i7-960 processor(8MB L3 Cache, 3.2GHz)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
MEMORY 12GB Tri-Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz - 6 DIMMs
HARD DRIVE 1TB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
VIDEO CARD ATI Radeon HD 5450 1GB DDR3
MONITOR 24.0" Dell ST2410 Full HD Monitor with VGA cable
OPTICAL DRIVE Dual Drives: Blu-ray Disc (BD) Combo (BD-ROM; DVD/CD Burner) and DVD+/-RW
SOUND CARD Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio edit
WIRELESS Dell 1525 Wireless-N PCIe Card
WARRANTY AND SERVICE 2 Year Basic Service Plan
OFFICE SOFTWARE Microsoft® Office Home and Business 2010

The differences that I can see immediately? The 9100 has higher speed RAM, a better Blu-ray player, and a slightly better vid card. The price is about $300 more for the 9100. So do I try to save money, or will that limit my computer's years of usefulness? I'm slightly more concerned with how long I'll be able to use the computer over price.

Any opinions would be awesome.

Comments

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm leaning toward it; it's my usual philosophy with computers. It was just that I was wondering if the difference was even anything to write home about.

The biggest thing that's steering me is that apparently the 9000's power supply isn't really up to the snuff, and the 9100 has a more robust power supply, so I think I'm just going to bite the bullet and go for the 9100.

Thanks for the help!!