This may be obvious, but you also must have a domain account with rights to add a computer to the domain. With the requirements out of the way, let's start with some preparatory, one-time work you'll ...

If I allow a user the right to create computer objects in a specific OU, and they have to pre-create the computer object there, does the limit of joining 10 computers to the domain not get counted ...

Add to domain<BR><BR>Note: If you are keeping the same IP, you'll have to remove the computer from the domain in order to avoid IP conflicts in you DCs.