[Joeaksa]

Zeke,

Buy as much as you can afford on RAM and hard drive speed and space. A 7200 rpm hd will give you faster data throughput than a 5400 rpm drive, and memory is cheap so if you can swing 1 gig RAM, do it.

A 60 to 80 gig hard drive minimum. I have two 120 gig drives in my machine and they are half full. You can add a second HD later for a descent price if you need room.

RAM and hard drive speed and space is more important than processor speed, unless you are doing a lot of complicated spreadsheet or math work IMHO.

Unless you really want a custom machine, and are ready to pay for it, its not needed IHMO.

No, 15" is not large enough. Get a 17" flat screen at a min and if the price is right add a second later on (yes, two screens, I have three at home on mine and could not live without it) that is at least 17" or even 19" flat screen.

If you are going to copy or burn CD's/DVD's, get dual drives. They cost under $50 these days for a CD/DVD reader. Get one good burner and a second reader, that way you put the disk to be copied in one drive and burn off of the second at the same time.

Dell is one of the best and their support has been good in my case. You can get the extended support or I always pay for things like this with my AmEx card. It doubles the warranty for FREE, so two years for free. Check with your credit card about this coverage, usually its free.