what do you think? a little help needed here

Hi ashishm6! I've never understand buying PC in the box, as some years ago when I was in UAE, I've nothing to do and calculate rates for PCs and components they were built from and difference in price scary me a bit, as you pay a lot for the name of the company like Dell or other Undecided

from other side from what I know you got some kind of warranty and maybe it's better for you to throw all your problems on the head of service center instead in solving them(from my experience, support rarely give some good and useful information(which isn't already included in manual) so I try to avoid them and solve my problems on my own when possible), from other side we don't have any service centers here so I'm talking about experince with service centers located in other countries id UK, AU, USA. I would reccomend that if you could assemble your PC, just buy these components on your own and make PC you wan't and not the one which is offered by dealers.
don't sure if you need it and it would be helpful but here is my subjective view on the model of PC you've provided(it's only my IMHO so don't take it too serious Wink

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8400 Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 530 with HT Technology 3.0GHz, 1 MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB)

personally I prefer AMD over Intel since in my opinion it provide better speed for less money. I'm also belive that by using more preciesive technology for printing their chips AMD they consume less power I judge about this because I've used two laptops which was Compaq Presario(don't remeber exact model, but it was AMD based) and Compaq Evo N1020v which is newer model and have 2.4GHz CPU comparing, if I'm not wron CPU of AMD was only 1.7(so of course this should be taken into account as well), anyway Intel based laptop run approx 2 hours on batteries when in the same time AMD one run about 4 hours or so(I was performing approx same tasks and use similar settings, so except of CPU there is not much difference I think)

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Intel® 925X Chipset
Integrated Gigabit Ethernet

I'm a bit afraid of on-board ethernet cards, not sure like networks are built in other countries, but here we got networks which don't really shielded from the factors like lightning, and after each huge rain our local shop get a lot of burned out motherboards, modems and ethernet cards(I've saw it myself and talk to my friends in this shop, we have small town here Wink

). So I've got feeling that if ethernet is built into motherboard it's not good idea to use it for something more than home net, as it's more likely that your motherboard would be damaged with the network adapter... but network card cost aroun 5 bucks and motherboard costs are much higher Undecided

I've Nforce 2 based motherboard with integrated ethernet as well, but I use it for home network, and for network with my friends I've bought other network adapter which cost me around 4 bucks, I feel a bit safer this way, but during the rain I plug off my network cable anyway

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1Yr Limited Warranty with Next Business Day Onsite Service

and here is the warranty I was reffering to, actually from what I know usually you can get from 1 to 3 years on each device, depending of brand and company politics. So IMHO in some cases it's better to go for individual warranty as if e.g. ethernet would get burned you just replace it with another and there would be no need to wait for computer to travel to service center and back.

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1GB(2x512) NECC Dual Channel DDR2 533Mhz SDRAM Memory

sounds cool, and since I don't know what kind of activity you wish to perform on your PC, maybe it's good amount of memory or bad, for me 512 is more than enough, Linux is using around 200-250 and don't even try to use swap.

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128MB PCIe™ x16 ATI Radeon™ X300 SE w/TV-Out & DVI (i think they mean the 9800XT series, is it any better then the 9600SE one??)

I don't play game(at least those with demanding graphics, my current favourite game is MahJong for a long time, I still have GeForce MX400 and don't plan to upgrade it.)

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Dell™ Wireless Keyboard and Optical Mouse

from what I've heard(don't wish to try it myself now), wireless things are pain in the butt, if you use computer for 2-3 hours than it's ok, if not better prepeare to spend a bit of money for extra accumulators or have a battery pack near you, if you don't wish to stay cut off from the PC because power in your keyboard are drained.

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17" Flat Panel LCD Monitor

this is one of the things I dream of, another is DVD Burner

LCD monitors is really cool(if you don't play a lot of games or don't have high demands, as all the models I've seend here still have a lot of inertia during fast movement on the screen), is there any information what brand or model of the monitor you get?

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160GB SATA (7200RPM) Hard Drive

I always wonder what brand is hidden behind this

Afer few bad experience in the past I don't trust to certain brands and try to avoid them by all means, that's another reason why I don't like computers which is assembled by other companies.

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Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional (English)

hope that it's come as a bonus and no extra fee is included

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DVD+RW/+R With CDRW Combo Drive

and again, what brand is it? I really like to have DVD RW in my PC, but if you do small searc on the web you would see that certain models and brands have compatibility problems, e.g. disks burned on them is impossible to read on any other device, for me it's important factor...

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Sound Blaster® AudigyTM 2 Sound Card

Thanks God, I don't have demanding ears and I don't need to buy expensive equipment to enjoy my sound experience on PC, my on-board sound card is more than enough

But I admit that Audigy is really cool thing, my friend have it in his PC, his room really filled with sounds, I wonder if how big the patience of his neighbours Roll Eyes

Anyway I believe that Dell is good brand, I mostly do this conclusion from what I've read about their PDA devices. sorry if this info wasn't very useful for you.