>>>All good questions...
>>>
>>>Desktop. I would say thay are more savy than the average person, but they like things very stable. He is older, so he does not like error messages popping up and all that. Wants to turn it on, run his programs, browse the internet and not have to deal with much else. He does know how to run/maintain things like AVG, etc. Would also like to have XP instead of Vista as he is very comfortable with XP and doesn't want to learn something new yet.
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>>I just got my parents a new Dell machine with XP Pro, 15" flat panel, 1 GB of memory for about $750 delivered. Spent Saturday setting it up and moving files.
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>>Tamar
>
>I tried to find one on their site with the option of not getting Vista, but couldn't find a way to do that. Don't need a monitor, so that will bring the price down. What model was it?

Inspiron 530s. FWIW, when I was shopping, there was a link on the site for getting a machine with XP. Try it like this. From dell.com, click "Home and Home Office." On that page, click the Desktops link. On the page that takes you to, look on the right-hand side. There are all kinds of special offers and one of them is "Still looking for Windows XP."

Tamar