I think I may have lucked up on a good deal. Circuit City had a few open box specials, one of which was a Gateway MX6625. It was a floor demo, and is very clean physically. It's pretty loaded up too (exact specs listed here).
I grabbed it for a measly $660. Not bad, 'eh? Of couse, being...
Sounds like you have a dad that's on top of his stuff, be glad about it! And he has a killer rig to boot.
As far as making the switch, I say definitely do it. Listen to the old man, he knows what he's doing.
Antec has been very good to me, but was initially tempted to go with Enermax this time around. I'll make sure to give them a good look before placing the order.
I'll definitely give it a look.
Fry's... I lucked into it when I called ahead and asked if they had a 940B in stock. They didn't have it, but had the BF instead and held it for me to pick up, but didn't have it displayed in-store at all. I would have never known it was there otherwise.
It has been nearly 4 years since I built my last rig (specs in sig, monitor is the only change from the original) and it has held up surprisingly well. I normally wouldn't go that long without building, but I kept putting it off because various stuff kept coming up. Well, the time has finally...
I just picked one up from Fry's yesterday. I just happened to call asking if they had a 940b, and they told me they had the 940bf instead. They held it for me, but when I went there I notice that they didn't have it on display at all in the store.