oh great- the computer I was looking at only has 1gig of ram on it! I can't afford more than that right now. I have a small computer budget. Well, I guess I'd better figure out how to get XP on it.

ok- here is what I'm ordering- STOP me now if you think this sucks
Dell AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core Processor
Vista OS
2 Gigs ram
250 gb hard drive
13/1 media card reader
flat speakers
19" LCD flat panel monitor
cd/dvd burner
and some video card (don't know what)

$749

Can you expand the Ram in the future? In other words, what is the maximum RAM, and what speed is it?

Do a search on the video card too as you won't want one that is designed for just gaming. Does the video card have it's own ram?

- How many Ghz is it?
- Type/speed of network card?
- What type of warranty does it come with?

These are all items I looked at closely when I got my new computer before Christmas. I went with the more expensive video card designed for rendering images, and it is a nice change.

Remember that it is cheaper to do the upgrading when you order the computer, so get the best you can while you can do it now.

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How many Ghz is it?
- Type/speed of network card?
- What type of warranty does it come with?

What figures am I looking for here? They said "standard" is what I'm getting. I guess I just figured that I've had my laptop for 4 years and I know that it has nothing special in it and it's been fine. I'm clueless as to what I "have" to have!

That PC will work just fine for simple things... Just remember that this system is already considered a few years old so you will not be buying for the future with this.. Athlon 64 is old tech.. I'd look for Intel these days as AMD is a bit behind and the price difference is minimal.

2GB is perfect is great and you should be able to expand to 4GB for future for little money later on.

The video card will be fine unless you are going to do 3D gaming (or really any gaming on there).. then you will want a dedicated gaming card with at least 128MB of memory.

If you can get XP instead... I would! Vista is more eye candy at this point than anything else.... but I believe Dell is pushing Vista onto every machine (must have some deal with Windoze)... even their bare systems are getting Vista and these systems just can't handle it.

It's not a bad system for the price... the 19" monitor you get will not be the greatest quality (ie: color calibration wise).. but if you are just scrapping, web, email, etc.. you should be just fine. Good luck!