[Blarg]

The above suggestions are mostly fine.

I would add that I four-table with a 44k modem(56k speed and lousy connection), and I do fine. You don't need broadband at all, not even remotely close.

I'd also get more than 256 RAM. Windows alone can eat up well over 128 of that that, and then you have to try to cram in your programs in what's left. Anything less than 512 megs of RAM these days and you're taking chances of running out of RAM and having the machine resort to writing on your hard disk, which can slow you down horrifically, as writing to hard is extremely slow compared to using RAM to keep your info in.

I even noticed in my web surfing and online gaming a solid benefit in moving from 512 megs to 784. From 784 to 1 gig of RAM had an effect, but it wasn't as noticeable. But you can still get well above 512, anyway, and be happy you've done it.

Another thing -- watch the RAM you get. I wouldn't get the ram at the 2700 speed. I like my RAM fast.

And hard drives should spin at 7200 rpm. Most these days do, but you will sometimes find prebuilt systems using 5400 rpm hard drives. Sometimes you don't write to disk for a while or read from it, but you can slow down drastically if you use less than the 7,200 rpm disks that are the current thing on the market now. They have faster ones by the way, 10,000 rpms, but they are much more expensive and not a lot of people really benefit from those. The average or even average power user doesn't have to worry about missing out by sticking with the 7200's and skipping the 10k ones.