damn you fat wallet!!! bought a HP 9300t system w/ Q9300 quad core for around $550 after ms live cashback in Sept 2008, about $250 off the going rate back then...put in an 8800GT 512MB video card, upgraded power supply and 6GB of RAM...
just pulled up my order on hp...
orig price was $1099...it was on sale and I had a coupon that bought the price down to $670 shipped and then got $100 MS LIVE cash back 60 days later...
HP Pavilion Elite m9300t customizable Desktop PC
* ? Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
* ? Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Quad processor Q9300 (2.5GHz)
* ? FREE UPGRADE to 3GB DDR2-800MHz dual channel SDRAM from 2GB
* ? 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9500GS, DVI-I, VGA, HDMI
* ? 320GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive
* ? No additional (Ethernet LAN port on system board)
* ? LightScribe 16X max. DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
* ? 15-in-1 memory card reader, 2 USB, 1394, video, audio
* ? ATSC-NTSC TV tuner with PVR, FM tuner, remote
* ? None (Integrated 7.1 channel sound w/ front audio ports)
* ? Microsoft(R) Works 9.0
* ? Norton Internet Security(TM) 2008 - 15 month
* ? HP keyboard and HP optical mouse
* ? HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope
put it all in bigger case also...
my asus netbook is about 5 months old...