Intel® Pentium® dual-core processor E5200 (2MB L2, 2.5GHz, 800 FSB)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic Service Pack 1
Microsoft Works 9.0
1Yr Ltd Hardware Warranty, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis
Dell S2009W 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor
4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz- 4DIMMs
500GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100
16X DVD+/-RW Drive
Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
No Floppy Drive Included
Essentials
McAfee SecurityCenter with anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, 30-Days
Please contact me with more details
No Modem Option
Dell USB Keyboard
Dell Entry Optical Mouse
Dell Online Backup 2GB for 1 year
No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system)
Accessories
Also Includes
No Digital Music Software Requested
Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 9.0 Multi-Language
Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
Windows Vista™ BasicCompatibility Alert
Price is around $700

Use mostly for burning and downloading cds and dvds, msn, email, banking so forth
$700

Sounds like a good deal until you need support. They hook you up with someone in india. Theyy give you a royal run around. You can pay extra for us support. But in my case they refused to correct their techs error and have the nerve to ask me to by another service contract.

That's nice

I would think for that though you should get at least Home Premium Vista and Not Vista basic

Think it would have modem included

I just went to HP.com and built a simialr system for $789. But with a QUAD processor and a monitor with built in speakers.

I wouldn't pay more than 600 for it there seems to be a lot of extra stuff in there that you probably wouldn't need at all

Like what don't I need

Anything and everything that has Dell's name on it or attached to it. You're paying for software that has compatibiltiy issues (MS Works 9) with other office orientated software. You're paying for dell online backup for one year (use Ghost - http://www.helljack6.com/ghost) to do your backups, and it's free. And you're literally paying for a free product, Adobe PDF reader 9.

Go to Tigerdirect and build a better machine with just specifically the operating system for about 200-300 bucks less.

If you want something out of the box, go with HP. Dell sucks and their customer service is horrible.

You may even want to consider building something yourself, although that can be a hassle if you don't know what you're doing.

I have to agree with you on that but if you do want to go with the dell I would get only 2 gb ram unless you plan or doing some gaming or video editing and you could even slice the hdd space in half to a 250 or even something smaller to save some money