watch bestbuy for a clearance deal. I have a friend who works at one (as geeksquad) and he tipped me off when they had a 2.5GHz Core2Duo/2GB RAM/250GB HD/Vista Premium/TV tuner/8 channel sound card/DVD burner, etc for $300 from $1200. They had 3 left; he got one, his roommate got one, and I got the thrid for my dad. :)
I then got him that 22" widescreen from Circuit City you tipped us off on.

Other than a driver problem with the sound card, which was resolved with a phone call to tech support, Vista has done an excellent job of not doing anything wrong with my not so tech-savvy parents doing their best to make it crash.

The last desktop I bought for myself was kind of the same deal: clearance from BestBuy. It's not so spectacular spec-wise because it's a couple years old now, but it was a AMD 64 bit with XP MCE, a dual layer dvd burner, 1GB ram, 200GB HD, etc for under $400 including tax, a 17" flat panel, and a cheap shit printer.

How about you buy my mediaPC for 125 bucks and call it a day :)

I can get you trend micro antivirus and spysweeper from work for like $9 each.

What do you think of AVG antivirus and AVG antispyware, the free versions? I've used them successfully for a few years now. Atleast the AVg AV, just recently started using the SW software.

I don't have any personal experience with them, at the GS I am more involved with removal that prevention. I do use the two above pieces of software daily in the removal process though, and both very successfully. Of course we use a bunch of other shit too. From my personal and professional experience TM and SS are both very good programs.

I'd have offered to test out those two programs for you at work a couple years ago, but they have really cracked down on us for using "unlicensed" software. Being a business we aren't even allowed to use free trial software. Sucks, I used to use the panda online scanner back in the day all the time.

there's not much to it but it does catch the 2 things a year I might be infected with. it auto updates so that's nice.

really though, if you have half a brain cell, you can avoid 99.99% of the viruses out there with no protection. I calmly await the jokes.

Dell can eat my ass, they facilitated the identity theft for my wife. Here's the rundown of how it went.

Shitbagthief: Yes, I'd like to purchase this equipment for my business, my aunt said she would pay for it. Here's her social security number.

Dell: Okay, here's your equipment. We'll Fedex the bill to your aunt.

...a couple of weeks later..

<doorbell>
Fedex: Sign here please.

Mywife: WTF? I didn't buy $10,000 worth of computers.

Dell: LOL@U.

^You can eat MY ass. Go back and read the first post in this thread... and then go away. Everybody has a story about how some company ripped them off. I'm sure there's even somebody out there who will talk bad about Begi. I'm buying Dell, end of story... I just need a little help/direction in picking the right one.

Everybody else, thanks for all the advice and hard work. The wife informed me she thinks we really need a desktop... so I'm back to the original plan. I'm gonna take a week or two and hit the Dell outlet a couple times a day to see if there's anything to be gained by being vigilant. If nothing tickles me, I'll buy a base Vostro and call it a day. Thanks again.