need advice rebuilding a new computer....

every component (except possibly mouse, keyboard and monitor), so I wouldn't speak of rebuilding, but of buying or building a new PC.
Nothing especially demanding with your wishes (photoshop, listening to music), so any current new PC would do, even the lower-end ones. For video-editing I'd recommend a dual-core CPU and 2 Gb or RAM.

So we have:
- dual core CPU
- 2 Gb RAM
- low-end videocard
- big enough SATA hard drive (only you can tell how much that is), maybe even two (default for your c:, a second one with larger blocks for video's)
- dual-layer DVD-burner
- sound on the mobo is OK, but a low-end sound card would be good also
- PSU 400 W
- no special requirements for mobo and case

I'd start with configuring one at www.dell.com and see how much it would be, as a base-line. Then go and look around.

Hope this helps.


Kees

To be honest with you, you could probably squeeze quite a bit more life out of your current system if you just boosted the RAM to around 1GB. Or whatever the max is for that particular system. Photo editing, and photo editing software is more RAM intensive than anything else.

If you really want to do more than that... As already said, you're going to have to either buy something new or build it from scratch, so keep that in mind.

I wouldn't recommend a dual core CPU, but I also wouldn't advise against them. A second core will have little impact on photo editing. Most of the time, the system isn't anywhere near fast enough to feed both cores, so one of the cores just sits around twiddling its thumbs almost all day.

RAM is the thing you want to pay the most attention to. For photo editing, consider 1GB to be the bare minimum acceptable. Having 1.5GB-2GB wouldn't hurt either. Especially on larger images.

Depending on how much time you spend in apps like Photoshop, it might be worth getting a specialized video card, such as ATI's and nVidia's FireGL and Quadro lines respectively. These often have specialized drivers that are designed specifically to accelerate specific processes within apps like Photoshop. They cost quite a bit more though. Other than that, without being a gamer, I wouldn't worry much about the video card. Almost all photo and video editing programs rely on the CPU alone.

I would also suggest two HDDs rather than a single large one that's been partitioned. Get one that's maybe 40-80GB, and that's where the operating system is installed, programs are installed, and non-work files are stored. Then a second large HDD where you store all your work related files. This way, if the small HDD fails, or the operating system gets hosed, you can just pull the second one and slap it into another system or an external enclosure to continue work on another system.

Like with the video, don't worry about the audio end of things unless you plan on doing a lot of high end audio work. It's just not worth the extra money unless you're an audiophile.

If it were me, I'd just max out the RAM on the current system as a cheap way to prolong the life of what I've got. So by the time it peters out again, you'll be able to get a much better system for the same amount of money, or maybe even less. Then you could always recycle the current system into a file server. Put a copy of Linux or FreeBSD on there, and just start loading it up with high capacity HDDs as the need and finances permit. Network it together with your new system, and you've got a handy place to store all of your files.