> I've gotten so fed up with fiddling with PC hardware recently
> that I think my next PC will be a Dell or Gateway or something
> instead of the built-it-myself one I now have. That way I'm
> fairly sure the hardware will work together.

Sorry to disappoint you, but buying such machines is often a recipe
for ensuring only Windows will work.  The hardware works very well
together, yes, but it is not always obvious how it is connected
together.  This is why laptops are such trouble.

Dell do their own motherboards, BIOS etc., and reason that if they
also do the drivers, then it will all work.  You then need to be sure
that they do drivers for your OS of choice.  Not good for Plan 9
users.

Harking back to olden times, when a 386DX with 8MB was a huge machine,
the supplier to buy from was Compaq.  As PCs went at the time, Compaqs
were the LEAST compatible, but also the MOST reliable. Of course, we
only had a choice of one OS then.

So, if you want zero hardware hassle, don't buy a PC at all, unless
you want to run Windows, and only Windows.