I priced the dells and with a digital 19" monitor, 1 gig of ram, dvd/rw, an athlon64 cpu 3500+, sata 160mb drive, a graphics card (vs integrated graphics) it will cost around 850 plus tax. If you go for the sempron, integrated graphics, smaller hard drive, etc. you could get it down to the low 700s plus tax. If you got theNewegg $109 cpu/mb current special (A64 3400+), got a Hanns G monitor from pcconneciton (19" DVI, 129 dollars), a low end graphics card, say 6200, 160gig Sata from outpost (they usually go for 35-50 every week or so on sale or with rebates), you could still get a very nice case, say the 90 dollar black lian li, a decent ps, etc. To sum up, you will save 150-200 over the equivalent Dell, but you will get a much nicer case/ps and you will have much more control over your machine. If you want to go lower end, the Dell probably makes more sense, but once you add the upgrades, the features that give the machine character and speed, you will wind up paying more. Of course you have to love doing it yourself as it's not worth an hourly rate to do the shopping, rebates, etc. But if you don't mind spending some time (see hot deals forum) you could come up with a very nice office box. And, oh yes, you can pick up xp home upgrade for 50 bucks at Amazon today, although you might prefer going with Vista RC2 along with office 2007 beta 2, as why spend money on an os/office suite you may want to replace later? (Well, I could think of a few reasons, but it's something to think about.) Actually, I built several of these guys myself using the earlier 3400+/mb combo at Newegg (754 cpu vs current 939 combo). By really shopping and sending in coupons I picked them up for around 550-600 each including xp home OS upgrade for $50 and 19" Hanns G monitor for $120, all this shipped. The one that cost $600 has the black Lian Li case. Very nice!
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