Don’t get OEM. They will give you some dumbass restore CD instead of a real windows CD. It makes it incredibly hard to get all the drivers installed witout installing all the extra trash they put on the CD. Some OEMs may not do this.
Whatever you do, do NOT, under any circumstances, buy a Compaq.
Building is probably the best way to go.
<<Yeah, but his 'puter will be in parts all over the kitchen counter, remember? >>
Yes, but if he builds his own, for the same amount of money he can get TWO computers!
I have: Desktop
Pii-233 processor, 96 MB RAM
cheapest video card money can buy
ditto, sound card (I also have hand me down speakers)
10 gig hard drive
v.92 software modem
CD-ROM (40x)
CD-RW (8x4x32x)
cheapo 19" monitor, Wal-Mart special (friend worked there, 25% discount)
I got the case, power supply, floppy, and motherboard from a friend as a Yule present. Everything else I bought one at a time and assembled.
I also have a laptop, same specs except 80 MB RAM, 3 gig hard drive, and a 28.8 modem.
I also have a vintage 1993 Mac…68k processor, 64 MB RAM, slower than heck but will get me online in emergencies.
The Mac was given to me, also the parts detailed above, and I’ve sunk less than $1200 into all three computers. I installed the CD-RW myself while on the Mac asking my best friend’s advice through AIM (I’m not hardware people, really.)
You can do it, too. Take your cash, sit down with some magazines and books, and figure out what you MUST have. Also look at what’s getting much cheaper…for instance, you can get some RAM now and buy some more in a year if you like. On the other hand, buy the best printer you can afford. Same for monitors; I thought about skimping and getting a 17" instead of a 19" until I realized…I spend half my waking time at home in front of this thing, it might as well be good. I don’t mind a wee bit of lag; it’s why I have two phone lines instead of a DSL or a cable connection. You may. Talk to folks in your area that have both; the only thing worse than a phone line connection is a high speed connection that you’re calling and complaining about because it won’t work. Same for anything else…put your money where it’ll cause you the least irritation.
Corr
This is true, but it won’t be that way long. I had my 'puter disassembled and reassembled in less than thirty mins. - Just remember to get my 1-800 # before you start in on it. 
Yes, 40GB, not MB – my typo
As far as the OEM restoration CD’s – they are “real” windows CD’s – all the windows cab files are there – the way my particular company has set up to auto reload the system is stupid. I have yet to run an auto reload for a client; I still copy the cabs to a freshly formated HDD and run the setup.
In short heres the pros and cons
Big computer company
Pro – they likely are not going away anytime soon, so you’ll have support forever. The easiest way to go
Con – some parts (motherboards usually) can be cheap sometimes depending on the model you buy
ma and pa computer store
Pro – you know exactly what parts are going in your system. Generally you can get it a little less expnsive
Con – are you sure they are going to be there at 3am tomorrow? how about a week later?
Building your own
Pro – more so than ma and pa you know exactly whats in your system and how it got there. Your going to learn a lot when you build the system
Con – if you can’t fix it, who will?
but regardless of whether you are talking PC or Mac, I think if someone felt they couldn’t go top-of-the-line wonderbox, I would advise them to flip to the back of their favorite computer-nerd magazines and dial all the 800 numbers for companies that still sell LAST YEAR’S top-of-the-line wonderbox with decent warranty, which should be substantially cheaper. In particular, I’d think a person would be better off getting a solid substantially-built machine with no cut-rate electronic parts from yesteryear than this year’s Assembled-in-Elbonia Com-Pheww-Tor with its not-quite-standard boards.
I hope I’m not too forward in hijacking the thread a bit on a related question about RAM from another timid, know-nothing computer guy.
I’ve got a two year old Dell with 64 MB of RAM, I just looked up what it would cost to upgrade to 128MB from Dells on line store. 27.00 sounds darn cheap.
I’m perfectly happy with what I’ve got now, what kind of ecstasy might I experience with an upgrade?
If you are working with Excel get as much memory as possible. That program eats the memory on my work computer. I have a Dell at work as well as home, no complaints at all.
Nope, don’t use Excell, mostly just Word on the Office apps.
and surfin’.
I realized after my OP that I should have given more info.
Dell Dimension XPS T450. 6GB harddrive and as I mentioned 64MB of RAM with a dial up connection.
Reading some of the above posts indicated that one might see an increase in speed with more RAM. Would my web surfing speed up appreciably?
Even with all the stuff that came loaded on the machine and the stuff I’ve added in the last two years, I still have almost 3GB of space left on the harddrive, so obviously I’m a light-weight user.
you’ll see a pretty good jump in performance going from 64mb to 128 or higher – once your up around 256 you wont see near the jump in performance going from 256 to say 320.
Thanks for all the responses guys. I really appreciate it. (I would have thanked you all earlier, but I had a long weekend away from work, and hence away from my access to a computer).
And a side note to Coldy – still happy as the horses shite here. (Though really, how hard would that be anyway?)
Since you’re on a budget, stay away from the Pentium 4. A mid-range to higher-end Pentium III or Celeron (at least 800MHz) should be more than enough for ya. I’m personally running a 500MHz Celeron system, and I have yet to run into something that I cannot run properly on my system. Granted, that day is approaching, but it hasn’t happened yet.
RAM is dirt cheap right now, so get yourself at least 256MB SDRAM.
CD-ROM isn’t dead yet. The big (well, only) advantage of a CD-RW is that you can actually burn (create) CDs instead of just reading them. Do you see yourself wanting to make CDs (data or music)? If not, then don’t bother. Plus, it is something that you can VERY easily add later if you change your mind.
For the modem, avoid any “winmodems” if you can. 56K is the standard right now.
Assuming that you don’t want to do the tinkering to build your own, I would put in another vote to go with Dell. For additional piece-of-mind, go ahead and get their 3-year warranty. I’m neutral on Gateway…I’ve heard equal amounts of good and bad about them. Avoid HP, Packard Bell, and especially Compaq like the plauge.
Hope this helps!