by preconfigure i hope you mean whipe it clean and load a plain jane version of xp home on there. because those compaq's and hp's are so cheap because they come equiped with there own spyware and adware. get the dell the warranty is better. if you have warranty issues they will send you the part first and you send back the dead one after. compaq/hp makes you send them the whole pc for them to repair kind of annoying trust me. i have dealt with tech support numerous times for all manufactures and dell has always been one of the better ones. even after they started outsourcing. $130 is not much more when you factor in you are self employed and time is money.
Jake
