I spent the waiting period by spending hours on this site devouring information. I tried to anticipate questions with the setup and the applications that I had in mind for my iMac. This forum has been a tremendous resource.
I handed down my 3 year old Velocity Micro PC to the kids, but kept the 20" Eizo monitor for photo editing. It makes for a nice match with the 24" iMac.
On a side note, I spent this Saturday morning at my father's and sister's homes installing antivirus programs, and otherwise doing some fine-tuning of their machines. The long startup time, and the slow response, not to mention the hours that I wasted tending to their machines, reminded me just how painful it was with the Windows PCs. My plan now is to eradicate our own household of the 3 PCs over the next three years, replacing them with each new generation of Macs.