I bought a refurbished Dell Dimension 4400 back when Windows XP was brand new in 2001. It was $625 shipped.

The only thing I ever did to it was upgrade the processor from 1.6GHz to a 2.4GHz and bumped the RAM from 256MB to 512MB. Other than that, everything in it is original. I used it for a few years then gave it to my father who has been using it ever since.

Last week it finally developed a problem. The system detected that the processor coolant fan was failing. This is indicative that a major failure is imminent, because even if I replace the fan, something else will probably bust shortly thereafter. And even if nothing happened after the fan replacement, the box is just plain old and would be too much of a risk.

After nine years of faithful service it was decided to finally retire the 4400.

Contrary to my computer needs, my father only needs the basics. He is the definition of the type of user that uses a computer "for internet and email only." And the box needed to be cheap besides that. After some research I instructed Pop to call Dell and purchase an Inspiron 531 desktop (pictured) with Windows XP, no monitor and no options. The cost with taxes and shipping was a tick under $300 and it will arrive next week.

Why didn’t I tell Pop to go for a refurb? Because at present the new Dell boxes are actually cheaper. Were he to use the Dell Outlet Store it would have cost an extra $50 even with the lowest-cost offering.

I asked Pop how his experience was with Dell sales. He said there were no issues at all. There weren’t any high-pressure sales tricks or any of that stuff, so that was good to hear.

Why did I tell him to go with XP? Because as configured the box will run XP much better than Vista.

The box comes outfitted with an AMD Athlon 2560e 1.6GHz CPU (512K) with 1GB of DDR2 RAM at 800MHz, a 16x DVD burner, nVidia GeForce 6150 SE integrated graphics and a 160GB hard drive. It also comes provided with keyboard and mouse. For just under $300 that’s not bad, especially considering it has a full 1-year warranty with in-home service.

If you were to buy a pre-built from NewEgg, the cost is about the same with shipping included.

If you were to build a box from scratch, the price is also the same. Remember, you have to add in the cost of Windows XP with all the hardware – and I’m not about to put my dad on Linux. It took long enough to get him used to Windows.

Like it or not, the cheapest computer desktop box right now hovers at or very close to $300 as the final price when all is said and done (purchase price, taxes, shipping, software license, all of it).

It kind of sucks that the 4400 box had to start developing problems now, because if it had lasted until October I would have purchased this same new box with Windows 7. Vista needs a big beefy PC to run optimally. Win 7 on the other hand will run on (much) older computer hardware. This has been proven to be true.

But oh well. XP is mature, stable and will get the job done.

The low-end Dell for the money is a decent box. It’s on par with the price of from-scratch builds and other pre-built boxes with similar specs.

I can’t give it a thumbs up or down at present because it hasn’t arrived at my dad’s place yet. Once it does I’ll be stopping over to configure/update it. When I sit down to configure this thing, I’ll post what happens here. Watch for it.