A friend of my daughter called me tonight and wanted my advice on a desktop she can play WOW on. She has about $1000 to spend. Should she go with a Dell/vista or would she be better off with a homemade with XP . Your ideas plz.

Yes, Tell her NOT TO PLAY WOW!!!!!!

Very simple doc. If shes got someone whos willin to build it for her for free and help maintain it, then a homebuild is the way to go. Otherwise....well you get the idea.
In the process of building one for my folks for a little over a grand. This includes a black Lian Li case and a 8600GT.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se...1&CatId=333
is a nice barebones deal. All they would need is GRX card or cards and HDs (which are cheap these days)

That is if she knows someone that can build it.

If not Go for a pre-built one. Tell her to check around at the little Mom & Pops computer places. Sometimes they have some pretty nice rigs and for a good price. Everyone forgets about them these days. There is one down the street from me that has some built systems with name brand components.

Well , I would build it for her at no cost. I like keeping my skillz up. That tiger deal looks pretty good. I think for gaming dual PCI-E crads would be nice. Does anyone have an opinion as to whether dual cards or a higher level single card would be better? And I would appreciate card input. I think I will install XP over Vista at this time. Not really any reason to go to Vista that I can see. Dx10 is not supported by many games. 2nd question: dual hard drives or just one large one? If I go with one large one would you partition it so the OS is on 1/2 and leave the rest for files? The one system she is looking at is a Dell 4000 AMD Athlon 64 X2 2GB RAM 250GB HD & 19" Diag. LCD. For $1045 it's a pretty sweet deal. Specs below:

Desktop Configuration
System Dell Inspiron 531 Mini Tower
Processor & Chipset AMD Athlon 64 X2 Processor 4000+*
Operating System Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium**
Productivity Software Microsoft Works Suite 2006, including Works 8, Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2006, Digital Image Standard 2006, Streets & Trips Essentials 2006, Word 2002, and Money 2006 Standard
Utilities Software PC-Cillin Internet Security with AntiVirus and Spyware removal, 15 months***
ISP America Online, 6 Months****
Memory 2GB Dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM (667 MHz) (Upgradeable to 4GB Dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM)*****
Ports Externally Accessible
Video: (1) VGA Connection
USB: 10 Ports (4 front, 4 back) and 2 internal
Audio: Six back-panel connectors for line-in, line-out, microphone, rear surround, side surround, SPDIF interface in rear, two front-panel connectors for headphones/microphone, integrated 7.1 channel sound
Network: Integrated ethernet
Integrated 10/100 network interface
Chassis
300-watt DC Power Supply Backup battery: 3V CR2032 lithium-coin cell

3.5" Bays: 3 bays (one external, one internal)
5.25" Bays: 1 bay

Memory DIMM slots: 4 total available

Dimensions H: 14.2" (36.2 cm)
W: 6.7" (17.18 cm)
D: 17.1" (43.5 cm)******
Slots PCI: 2 Slots
PCIe x1: 1 Slot
PCIe x16 (Graphics): 1 Slot
Hard Drive 250GB SATA hard drive (7200 RPM)*******
Online Storage Dell 3GB DataSafe Online Backup and Sharing for 1 Year********
Optical Devices/Storage Media Single Drives: 16x DVD+/-RW (plays and burns CDs and DVDs)*********
Floppy Drive None
Media Card Reader 19-in-1 Media Card Reader with Bluetooth**********
Sound Card Integrated 7.1 channel Audio
Speakers Dell A225 30W Speakers
Video Cards NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE Graphics GPU
Monitor Options SE198WFP 19" Diagonal Widescreen Flat-panel Display
TV Tuner None
Keyboard Dell QuietKey Keyboard
Mouse Dell Optical Mouse
Network Interface Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
Wireless Network Card None
Modem 56K Data/Fax Modem***********
Service 3-year Limited Warranty, 3-year On-site Service************

I have bought a barebones kit from Tiger and am happy with it. One thing of note, is you have to buy a heatsink from them to have the cpu warranty in effect. And of course the quad is well worth having the warranty in place.

That sounds like a pretty good deal. Can't go wrong with a Dell for a prebuilt.

no question here DELL and i think you can get XP or nothing on it at this time,

Dell uses propitiatory componets that make upgrading harder and if you need tech support you better be able to speak a foreign language.

Tiger Direct seems little more to me than a polished junk store when compared to a place like Newegg.

Oh, buy the way, how you feelin these days you sexy Old Fart you?