Thinking of getting into the Cnc Hobby Need some Help!

[CnCustoms]

Well I've been a member here for some time.Mostly just looking what everyone else is building and so on.However I'm thinking about giving it a go and building my own cnc machine.First and fore most I would like to know what most of you use your machines for? what type of thing do you fabricate what are the limits and whats a good size to start with for a machine?also what kind of material can be cut with such a machine??I am currently looking into the 8020 aluminum extrusions for a base and building blocks as it requires a minimum amount of tools to put together.I am curious as to what extrusion I should get to minimize flex and improve accuracy.Also let me just say I dont have a background in programming so this will be a learning process for me.I do have the software however.Currently have Mach3 software just learning it now and trying to figure everything out.So pretty much big question is what extrusion should i use?how big of a machine should I build??I have enough room for a 5'x5' machine however I am not sure if ill ever need all that room,but it would be nice.Also Is there any plans out there available using 80/20 extrusions??or anyone have any pictures of how the gantry sits or rolls on the extrusion? I havent been able to find any upclose pictures of the setup.Also how many hours would you say youve spent building your machine?And also a hardware question.I see that a lot of machine are driven through stepper motors,using belts or rack and pinion drives,and so on.I see that alot of them are connected to drive boards and the input come from a pc or laptop via LPT port.Is there any alternitive to that? for instance if i were using a newer laptop or netbook without a LPT port would I be able to make a new pc or netbook work without a LPT port in some other way maybe via usb?or ether net cable connection?Any info you could provide would really help me out.If anyone have any links to some diy construction using 80/20 extrusions that would be awesome.Sorry for the long post.There is alot of info on this forum i'm trying to learn as much a possible.I do apologize if I didnt use the correct terminology.Any help would be appreciated.