I think this is what I'll do next computer. It's cheaper and personalized for what you want.

I got everything in and working yesterday. Had no problems at all except for one thing, the modem doesn't work. Maybe its a bad modem or maybe I'm doing something wrong?? It was real simple, a lot easier than I expected it to be. I'm gonna try and get a different modem tomorrow and see how that goes. Till then, I'm stuck using the old slow comp for the net.

MasterMind, you little engineer you :D

Everything is complete. First post on the net using the new comp.
Finally got the modem to work, guess the other one just didn't like my setup so I went and exchanged the thing for a different one. Building this thing was a piece of cake.

If you're not scared of a little challenge or messing up, I suggest you build your own computer next time. Just do a little research on your parts and you should be okay.

Wow, where'd you find a 17" monitor for $90, and an optical mouse for $15? Those are some pretty good deals. Did you get them at wholesale?

No, there are computer fairs around where you can get stuff really cheaply. There was this one over here which had Windows 2000 on sale for like £10 and... oh, hold on, you may have something there.

Really though, building your own computer isn't that tricky. Things like monitors and whatnot you can often pick up second hand (in London my mate Mikey was lucky; graphics people are always byuing new monitors, so you can buy f**king excellent monitors that they've gotten rid of cheaply - he managed to get a Dell 19" for about £50 I think.

Just to reiterate what other people have said (plus some other stuff):

Always use static prorection
Never make your computer in a thunderstorm (this can cause your static protection system to become charged if it's earthed via your mains)
Make sure you buy a heatsink that can deal with the processor you're going to use
REMEMBER TO USE THERMAL GREASE WHEN YOU ATTACH IT!
Make sure you mobo can support enough devices (a floppy doesn't count) and (obviously) is compatible with your processor
Make sure your power supply unit can give enough power for it all (300 W is a good bet)
Buy good core components (mobo, processor etc.) so the crappier ones can be upgraded later if you need the computer now but can;t afford a full blown spec just yet

I've always found loading the OS to be really easy... just go into BIOS, select boot from CDROM (instead of floppy, unless your OS CD comes with a boot diskette in order to tell BIOS to do this), and you're away.

I could also start advising people to give Linux a whirl, but I imagine most of you couldn't care... sniff. Hey ho.

Well, I'll be assiting in the Construction of a PC at the Computer Camp I'll be working at this Summer. While the Campers will be installing most parts, I'l probably be helping a technican named Jim Miller, who has repaired my PC's several times, put together core components. He'll probably handle the MoBo, and other parts, but I'll probably be doing RAM, and Possibly a Drive of some Kind (I'm hoping to do the DVD-ROM Drive, since mine needs repair). We'll be installing windows on it, only because it's what most of the campers currently use, although we're trying to get away freom windows, and I'll be teaching CD Burning, which should be fun. It'll be interesting to see how this thing comes out in the summer. Granted, It'll be for the camp, but I just want to get a chance to work with some new stuff. We've repaired old PC's in the past, but thisa will be the first time that everything is installed from scratch, and Static Discharge will be a top priority of mine.

I actually have to use linux at school. I'm no expert at it or anything, but I would like to give it a try at home one of these days. Its free right?

Yep, it's free. There are two (easy) ways of going about it though:

You can either download the install images from the web and burn them to CD (seeing as my discs occupy three full CD-ROMs, I'd onlt recommend this if you've got a high speed connection). Apart from the time it takes and the connection costs, this is the "free" method.

Or you can buy copies of these images that somenoe has burnt onto CD so people don't have to go to the hassle of downloading them. This is how I did it, and I spent £9 (about $12 I think) having 3 CD's burnt and posted to me.

If you want more money to spend, then you can splash out on one of the official boxed distributions from Mandrake, SuSE, Redhat or the like. These cost about £30-50 and come with full documentation and about 8 CD's worth of stuff, such as the full source code and whatnot.

If you have a high speed connection, apparently you can even install directly off the internet... but this sounds a bit complicated to me!

And if there's any budding programmers out there, mine and I imagine al other Linux distros come with a comprehensive set of developing tools, such as compilers and whatnot.

The main thing to remember that Linux is free in the sense that you can do whatever the hell you want with it... you can write or modify existing programs and redistibute them by yourself if you want. The cost of the CD's is all you'll ever pay for (except that some of the distro's come with applications that aren't free, such as Sun's Star Office), and virtually anything can be downloaded from the internet for nowt.