The specs look nice. I dunno if you can get a better deal, but if you're willing to spend the money it isn't a bad machine. I'd keep looking around though, just to see what else is out there.

Also, is XP Media Center edition okay? I'm not really familiar with it, but I guess these are supposed to be gaming PCs, so they should be okay. But, the name Media Center makes me think DVR and picture sharing type stuff, not gaming. Its not like Dell to make a mistake like that, but it just strikes me as odd.

 

hmm, most of the ones i've seen are running xp pro. im sure media center would still work with gaming and stuff though.

 

the regular office fahgs use macs. the animators and rederfarm are/were *nix.
There are a couple of PC servers and pc clients.
I had to sniff the network because something was locking/hammering our device. They ended up giving in a creating a vlan for us.

 

Windows Media Center is basically a TV/DVR/Music/Photo/Movie application bundled with Windows XP, designed to be used from 6 feet away with a remote. It's fine on a gaming PC since you only start it up when you want to use it.

 

XP media center is bloated. When you order your dell, ask if you can just get XP pro or home. If you are not going to need the media center stuff, don't get it.

 

yeah, true that. i looked and it said XP pro is 100 bucks more than Media center?! wtf?!

 

The main difference between XP and XP Pro is that it allows the PC to join a domain. Also, I think it has more flexibility in user management.

I wouldn't worry about Media Center, there's one process that runs in the background to record your scheduled TV shows. Other than that, it will use the most resources when you're actually running Media Center.