Affordable options for a new PC

[PSA DC-9-30]

OK, so I need a new windows machine (Please don't try to persuade me to buy a Mac!!) but need to do it on a budget. Our recent trip to Russia cost a great deal more than we were expecting and I don't really earn all that much in the first place (you see, unfortunately, I have a Ph.D.)

Anyway, we've owned a Dell for the last five years and have generally been quite happy with it, but we need more memory, disk space, USB 2, etc. THe HP we owned prior to the Dell was an inspired work of pure evil (the fact that it had 32 Mb of RAM and ran Win 95 didn't help) and this has soured me on HP products ever since.

I really hate the way Dell et al. always bundle their monitors, keyboards, etc., etc. with their new computers. I don't want any of the monitors they are offering (and if you select the "No monitor" option, the price goes down by five bucks--what a joke!). ALL I want is a new tower (monitor will be bought separately later).

Here's what I want:

- Intel Dual Core Processor (not too picky about the speed)
- 0.5 Terabyte HD
- 4 Gb of ram (I'd like 8, but think this will be cost-prohibitive)
- A DVD burner.
- Windows XP (really have no desire to delve into Vista at the moment).
- A decent video and sound card.

There, is that so difficult? Is that really going to cost me $2000, or can I do better? Is there a reputable company that will custom build you just the computer for a reasonable price and not try to sell you every damn thing under the sun to go with it?

Thanks,
Kevin

[rdonson]

I recently had a Windows box go toes up and I replaced it with a Dell XPS 410 with the following:

- Intel Core2Duo E6600 (2.4 GHz)
- 4 GB RAM
- 2 - 250 GB drives (that I put in RAID 1 mirror - I learned from that failure - you could use Dell's "datasafe")
- Windows XP Pro (I don't want to deal with the Vista color engine problems)
- was able to get acceptable video and sound
- got an XP Pro install disk

$1500

I didn't need a monitor or mouse.

I added my own internal 500 GB SATA II drive as the "D" drive very inexpensively.

In the past I've avoided Dell for the infamous bloatware.  Putting the drives in RAID 1 wiped them clean but it does seem that you have an option to avoid the bloatware with Dell these days.