[Overpaid Slacker]

As much as I hate to even appear to be a relativist, I've got to ask what it's supposed to be used for. If you "had" to buy it, I doubt it's going to be a multimedia godbox - which is good, given the (relatively) small cache, lack of dedicated video card and lack of dedicated sound card.

It's unlikely that the MoBo brand will make too much of a difference, unless it's a real obscure North Korean brand.

Once you take the premiums for top shelf a/v cards (around $600) and a monitor (pick your price) out of the equation, you're left w/ a good box at a good price.

You'll almost certainly want more memory at some point. I think 256MB is a bit thin on an XP box. At the very least, get MemTurbo for a few bucks to help keep your memory tidy.

JP