Andy and Wayne, all good tips, thank you. The idea of the January sales is sound, but I'm an impatient kinda bloke, and " the thought is father to the deed ".
I know PCW aren't the ideal place to deal with, but that's who the lease company are tied to. So be it.
Toby, secondhand isn't going to be a viable option, for the reasons detailed above.
Justin, ah USB ports, my pet subject.
I know that the top end machines like young Twinspin has often have four ports. Almost all the ones in my price bracket have three. Now here's the thing. As I said earlier, my trusty Acer has four, which is why fitting it with a new engine, flared arches and go faster stripes has crossed my mind more than once. Question is, how far can I upgrade it? New HD is easy, but can I stick at least 8 gig of ram in, and how fast a processor will it take? I don't want to spend money on that, and then find it's slower than an off the shelf one.
With a terrabyte hd in a new one, I'd be able to lose the external drive anyway, so effectively four ports anyway. I've also had success with using an unpowered hub to accept mouse receiver and USB sticks with music transferred from the download tablet.
Keep going lads, we'll get there in the end. Thanks to all so far.