purchasing or having a PC built.. ? help me!

I have built a couple of systems, and bought one that was built for me, and have bought a pre-made system, Dell.

Of ease of use and lack of problems I would have to go with a pre-made system. With the matching componets in a pre-made system they just seem to work better together when it comes to problems. It really all depends on how you plan to use the system. If you just want to surf and email go with the pre made system. If you are going to use it for other apps then building one is the way to go.
If you are going to be a power user and use lots of the system resources building one is really the only way to go. Just my thoughts.
Jonathan

If you are only surfing the web and the other stuff, you are planning on a more expensive machine than you really need. The 4.3 Gb Pentium is way more speed than you will ever use for the stuff you talk about. I would suggest a Dell refurbished unit, they are a little cheaper and I have bought 3, including a laptop, and all work well. I also have a 2.2 Gb tower that I built when it was the top of the speed range and works great for doing more than you anticipate. I do recommend more RAM for better performance, my main machine has 1 GB. but you could save a few bucks on the CPU and a little more on the RAM and have better performance. For downloading from the Internet, if you are going to be using dial-up, then that will be slower than anything else on your machine. Anything from about 1.5 Gb CPU up will probably be overkill for your uses. Look for refurbished Dell units if you are on a budget.

CBS

Well I can tell you some good places to look at.

You can look at Dell (dell.com) because they are having a lot of low prices since this is the holidays sales and everything goin on.

There is also NewEgg (newegg.com) which is sort of a computer hardware store. They have tones of retail discounts on a lot of different things for you computer. From my past experience they are really good.

Now on the Dell thing again. My brother just bought a Dell Deminsion 8400:
3.20GHZ P4 Processor
1GB RAM
260GB Hard Drive
16x DVD-ROM / DVD-RW Double Layer Writer:

He bought his computer not much over $1000. He also got a good monitor which Dell's monitors are really cheap.

Now if you are looking for a good computer, Alienware's computer are coming down really really cheap. So just some helpful places to look. Have fun!!!

Asus A8V Deluxe Socket 939 Barebone Kit / AMD Athlon 64 3400+ / 60GB HDD (2 x 60GB) / 512MB DDR / 64MB Video Card / DVD

here is what i found threw a friend. is this a deal? pen4, 3.0ghz
512mb ram
80gb harddrive
cd/dvd burner
just the pc only cost 645.00. is this a good offer?