[Wayne Luke]

Buying a computer today, I wouldn't purchase a dual-core processor. They are already reaching obsolescence with tri-core and quad-core becoming common in the workstation and 8 to 16 cores being used in servers.

3 GB of RAM is a holdover from Vista pre-SP1 to reduce irate support calls on "Why isn't all of my memory showing up? I purchased 4 GB and it only shows 3." 4GB should be the minimum now. Of course if you want more you need a 64-bit OS.

If you want to play any games, you'll need to ditch the on-board video chip. You'll need a dedicated card with at least 256 Megabytes of RAM for DirectX 9 games and 512 MB for DirectX 10 games. At least to get decent performance. I could see Word 2007 and Adobe Reader having problems with the onboard graphics as well if you open large files with lots of images. Can cause problems on websites with a lot of media embedded as well.

The hard drive is tiny. Vista alone is going to take 10 GBs. Probably another 10GB of stuff installed by Dell. You should really consider a larger hard drive if you want to store any appreciable amount of media or database backups from your website.

Also consider Windows Home Premium. Basic is really going to limit what you can do with your computer in the long run.