+1 for staying away from alienware, as much as i hate to say it cause i used to love them.

I used to love them as well, though it was expensive the one I bought was well made and with exactly the parts I wanted. Sadly they just don't offer that experience any more.

The last computer I bought for the wife was a Gateway FX which came configured with every choice I would have bought anyway, and for a good price. Unfortunately it looks like they haven't updated their product line since then.

I upgrade my PC with hand picked parts for the best price/performance, and I don't think SSDs are there yet. Also, I have a lot of large software so saving a few seconds of launch time on some packages isn't enough. OTOH, if you doubled your RAM with the price difference, I wonder if that would speed up more things more effectively.

I still build all of my own computers as none of the makers offer a machine that has 20 or more drives in a raid array and a high end system with a good video card like I run. Also it would likely cost me 3x as more for a high end config like that even if they did.

Sure they do - they just call them servers :D

And if you are using that much data, you should probably be using a server, and a SAN.