I'm wanting to buy a new computer. Can someone suggest to me if it's cheaper to buy online or from a store? I'd like to buy from a large retail establishment, either online or a local chain that offers their own financing.

Does anyone sell computers with Windows XP and Unix already installed?

Will a 60GB hard drive be enough for downloading files if I go into the hosting business and say have 200 customers with an average of 300-500MB, and I only use 10 of the 60 gig for myself?

Also, what type of hard drive should I look for? EIDE? IDE? 7200rpm?

What processor? Athlon? Pentium? Duron? Celeron?

Is 1 gig processor and 256K SDRAM good enough?

Any other advice or suggestions are appreciated.

Hard drives= dirt cheap these days, get at least an 80GB IDE 7200. I would suggest that you add a second HD for backups. If you have any choice, the new Western Digital HD's with the 8MB of cache make a big difference over the standard 2MB run of the mill cache. The price is not much higher.

processors= I'm partial to AMD because of the lower price but any AMD XP or Intel P4 will do most of what you want it to do. I wouldn't bother with the Duron or Celeron.

Go for 512MB of DDR ram, prices are very reasonable now. You really don't need any more that that unless you were running a CAD or large graphic apps.

Cooling is very important. Make sure you have proper cooling in your case.- Good Luck.

Actually, its cheaper if you build it on your own. Just grab a book or check out some online sites, they have sites devoted to step-by-step instructions on building PC's.

I would suggest:

Intel Pentium 4 1.8Ghz Socket 478 512K cache
512MB PC133 Micron/Crucial SDRAM
Intel Motherboard
Western Digital or Maxtor 7200 RPM IDE Hard Drive

Definately get at least 512 megs of RAM.