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Haha - I always wonder why these stories get so much play - Dell is far from the only vendor out there, and at that they are never the cheapest. If you want a box w/o OS and not build it yourself, there are only a million places to buy one online. Most small local shops by now have decent websites that let you customize your own system from them, which makes it even easier. Cheaper, same/better customization, w/ or w/o an OS, and local if you ever have warranty issues. Here are three local to me. The only real advantage to Dell I see is when you happen to want the monitor and printer they like to bundle w/ their system.

Hm, I can get a Duron 1600 box, 256 MB DDR, 128 MB Radeon 9200, 8X DVD-RW, and 80 GB drive for $380 retail from my local screwdriver shop. True, it'd be more with a IEEE-1284 card and a new monitor (assuming you're one of the three computer buyers on Earth who needs either) but I'm pretty sure you could get to $330 with volume discounts. Freshmeat has several nonlinear editors and DVD burners, though I don't know enough to comment on them--do you find them all inadequate?

Admittedly all this is more affordable if you have spare parts to use, as many geeks do.

I work with a consulting firm, but the office I'm in is down stairs in a suite of our own away from the suits.

For many months we had all gotten used to having tunes playing on the speakers connected to my box (myself and two others split the cost of some cheap Altec Lansing speakers). At first I acquired some mp3s from a coworker upstairs, then later I ripped a bunch of our CDs to OGG and shuttled them to work on CD-RW...

Recently we reorganized our seating arrangement and it left me and another coworker in a room to ourselves. I took the speakers with me since they were connected to the box I was using...

Well, no more than two weeks and my supervisor was franticly trying to come up with a way that he and the ladies in his area could have some music again!

I told him to simply buy some cheap speakers, but he didn't want to at first... Two days later, he gave me $20 to go to the local computer store and get some more cheap speakers for him!

They're happy now! :)

Well, anyway, you can buy it here for $199.

Talk to your local computer parts retailer; most will assemble for a small fee. Where I live (near Seattle, WA), a retailer named Infotech Systems lets you pick components and assembles them for you for a few bucks. I'm sure that where you live, you can find a fairly similar service. All you have to watch out for is tech support, because while small/medium stores might offer a warranty, they won't give you free tech support. But then, if you really want someone to hold your hand, you could just go to someplace like CompUSA (blech!).

There is a company, Koolance, out of Federal Way, WA that just came out with a Mid-tower ATX case that is liquid cooled. I saw one of their demo units at InfoTech. They had a jacket strapped on the CPU and tubes going into the power supply, but later in March, they are going to release Video Card straps and Hard Drive coolers. When this thing is turned on, all you can hear are the hard-disk drives and Disc drives spinning. The ambient noise level is that of a single CPU fan. Price tag is $170, and you must have it installed at the store (for stability reasons).

Maybe enough demand for something practical like this will stimulate some innovation to enable home users to perform such an upgrade safely?