I talked my boss into letting me get a new workstation, since I rarely ever undock my laptop (it's going to a member of management who hates her current laptop), but the trick was that I had to keep it under $1,000. So, to get the most bang for the buck I paid a visit to the Dell Outlet store. I've never had a problem with refurbished equipment from them in the past, and it's got the same warranty as the new stuff.
I ended up getting a Dell Precision Workstation T1600 with a Xeon E3-1245 CPU, 4GB of RAM (expandable to 16GB), 1GB ATI FirePro V4800 GPU, 1 TB & extra 500 GB drives, and a E2311H 23" monitor for $914.18. Oh, and Windows 7 Pro 64-bit. Without the monitor, it appears the same system brand new is around $1,500 or so (minus tax & shipping). I used a 15% off coupon from the outlet store (expires today), and there's free 3-5 day shipping. I should be able to run a few VM's off that machine!
If anyone else is computer shopping and ready to pull the trigger, you might want to give it a look. If you need the coupon code, I got it from
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