thanks everyone. I am dealing in canadian dollars and it's all much more expensive. I'm not sure why the prices aren't equal when converted. It's disheartening.
It's the video cards and agp/pci cards etc that confuse me. Dell and other internet companies don't have refund policies if the machine doesn't end up being entirely what you want. That scares me a bit. There is a store in town here that has a full 14 day refund policy but the system is a little more expensive and a brand I have never heard of. It's upgradable which is nice and I can add on things like a dvd or floppy drive. It's annoying that most systems don't include a monitor and I have to buy one separately. I wish I had a friend who knew computers who would just volunteer to go shopping with me. Argh!
Any advice would be appreciated.
Let's see, I need it for wordprocessing for school. Windows xp I guess. I need it for downloading and uploading photos and using photoshop 7 and printing out the pix too (storage onto cd's would be nice). I need to be able to build and manage my website as well.
WHat would be a good price to look for for all of this encorporated into a system?
thanks everyone. I'm feeling pretty good these days but this computer mumbo jumbo is really getting me down.
love ya all for the help
take care
tina

"we were meant to live for so much more, and we lost ourselves"
Switchfoot