> I friend of mine is looking at an HP Pavilion N5250 700Mhz 128MB for $867.
> Any comments on that model?  (She would probably stick with the M$ Me, but
> I might be able to convince her to try Linux.)

(ahem, no wisecracks on the X-Mailer, it's my brand new ThinkPad)

Yea, I have a comment -- stay as far away from it as you can.

In general I like HP (printers ..) but their decision to compete in the
"looks cool" and "small package" (think IMac) market is a mistake for the
end-user. As far as I'm aware, you _might_ have 1 PCI slot open (3 total)
and most likely you'd have 0. I know someone that has one, he was forced to
buy a USB network card that dongles off the back, ugh.

Solution? I researched for many hours and put together a (low budget) box
recently:

Asus A7V133 with audio, Duron 800, 128MB PC100 (non-ecc), Enlight 7237 ATX
Case, WD 30GB Drive ATA100, Logitech "Cordless Freedom" Key/Mouse combo, 52X
CD-ROM, Viewsonic 17" (model # ?), Nvidia TNT2 8MB Video

.. something like that, around $850 two months ago. I bought most of it from
mwave.com, General Nanosystems and CompUSA. Then, if you're clever
(pricewatch.com) you can find Win98/ME and MS Office Suite 2000 in RETAIL
BOX form for very cheap.

Oh, BTW - I researched the some big box brands too. Dell -- unbelievably
cheap, so cheap they're running 3-4 weeks (+ shipping) to get your box to
you. Gateway, slightly more expensive (but with better components). If you
can wait on Dell, and their salespeople don't hang up on you, they'll give
you a similar box (minus the trusted brand names) with free software,
98+Office == ~$200, they include it for free.

Personally, the free software bit seems criminal -- so you could* build your
own to protest out of principle, and you get the bonus of selected brand
names and possibly higher resale/trade value.

-Jay J