Can I build this for less?

[Carolina-Mike]

Dell has a sale on their 530 Inspiron

Intel® Pentium® dual-core processor E5200 (2MB L2, 2.5GHz, 800FSB) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit edit
OFFICE SOFTWARE Microsoft Works 9.0 edit
WARRANTY & SERVICE 1Yr Ltd Hardware Warranty, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis edit
MONITOR No Monitor edit
MEMORY 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz- 4DIMMs edit
HARD DRIVE 320GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™ edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 16X DVD+/-RW Drive edit
VIDEO CARD Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100 edit
SOUND Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio edit
KEYBOARD & MOUSE Dell USB Keyboard and Dell Optical USB Mouse edit
FLOPPY & MEDIA READER No Floppy Drive Included

Could I build a comparable or better system for less? Will this system allow me to use google earth and or do any gaming or should I get a more advanced video card?

thank you

[not important]

If you are referring to the $279 price...no you can't but you can't certainly build a better one for a couple of hundred dollars more.

[Carolina-Mike]

This one is now $329 - Would the graphics allow me to use google earth and/ or do any gaming?

Is this type of machine one I could upgrade in the future if I wanted?

[EzyStvy]

The 530 does have an empty PCIe slot to add a video card...But the small power supply will limit the video cards...I run a 8600gt in my 530 machine with the original power supply.

[glc]

That is going to be the limiting factor - how strong a video card it will handle. The only factory options are Radeons - a 2600XT and a 3450, neither of which are good gamers. They only have 256mb video ram. Google Earth should run okay on the standard onboard video, but forget any kind of gaming except kiddie games and stuff that's at least 5 years old.