Seems so many posters urge others to build a PC. Well not everyone has time, money or whatever to do it , but in any event I would like to see someone take a preconfigured Dell or Gateway as posted here and match the parts and price each item, so that we can really see the difference in cost. If possible also supply the link where the part is to be purchased.Some homework for builders. ;)Bill

Edit: Ugh I just made up the biggest calculation when I discovered the gateway system comes with a 17" CRT not an LCD so I had to redo everything. It's too late at night now to guarantee that my calculations are correct :-lol I read "Flat CRT" as "Flat LCD"...Also I forgot the speakers (and probably a couple of other things) but I guess most people alread have speakers. Otherwise they're maybe $30 for a pair of shite 2.1's.Good idea. Here's my contribution based on this one:http://products.gateway.com/products/GConf...d=5200xl&seg=hmI pulled most prices from Newegg, some from Pricewatch and a few from thin air.Intel

If you go there: www.progresssystemsinc.com they will build it for you whatever you want and you won't pay any more than if you built it yourself.Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2

Hi Bill, if the main goal of the purchase is FS, it might be worth while considering an AMD64 too? The electricity company though, probably prefers to see you buy a P4 Prescott. Now, that amount of excess energy in return, needs to be cooled again, which often leads to pretty loud machines. And that's only one side. The other is, the AMD64 is a considerable bit faster, as the memory controller is integrated into the CPU and it's no longer the mainboard chipset, which needs to do the job. Hope this adds to thoughts. Good luck and kind regards Jaap

Thanks for all the feedback.Bill

No doubt whatsoever that " build your own" will be cheaper and it'll be more likely to do what you want.Regarding the aspect of WinXP installed on a factory assembled machine - the biggest disadvantage of this is that the WinXP you get often these days only comes with a recovery disk rather than a "proper" MS Windows disk.There are some things on a standard WinXP Disk which often are not available on a machine that come preloaded with a PV assemblers version of Windows( EG: in some cases Recovery Console, sfc /scannow etc.Dave