<p>I'm not sure how this question will be recieved here but lets give it a shot...</p>

<p>It's time for me to get a new dev PC. What's the best choice these days?</p>

<p>I typically have 2-3 Visual Studios open along with mail and all that stuff. Ideally I would imagine 2+ GB of RAM would be nice as my current XP box is dying. =)</p>

<p>I hopped on the Dell site (my days of building PC's are behind me. I just need something that gets the job done.) and started browsing around only to be confused from all the processor choices. What does a typical dev box need these days? Duo? Quad?</p>

<p>Is it worth going to 64 bit Vista as well?</p>

<p>It's been a while since I got a new machine so I'm just looking for some guidance.</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

People are probably going to yell at me...but I've found that Vista 64 is mostly worth it.  The main reason for me though is that I'm always maxing out my memory and having a 64bit OS allows me to go past the <4GB limit of 32bit.
But even if you don't get 64bit, just buy 2 2GB RAM cards anyways....you will be able to use most of it (my system shows 3.5GB on 32bit) and then you've got it for if you upgrade later and (if your system has 4 slots) you'll have room to expand to 8GB later on....