£600 incl. OEM XP ... suggestions?

I have a friend who can possibly stretch to £600 (absolutely no further, and must include VAT and OEM XP Home), so as I've been out of the market for a while, I'd really appreciate some suggestions ... :)

I am in the same boat, best bet is to look towards the scan/komplett/aria today only deals on a decent TFT, then I am looking towards a little shuttle system to try and get within the 600 quid limit. Obviously at £600 it ain't gonna have all the modern day toys in it.

So far something along the lines of a shuttle barebones, 3200+ a64, gig of corsair value memory, 200gb hd, 17" run of the mill TFT due to no gaming on the machine, it can be done but its a case of mixing and matching the cheapest deals out there.

With home build this is doable, with shuttle it's a bit harder as you pay quite an overhead.

Look for a venice 3200+ chip (112), 1gb DDR value select ram(62), 80gb hard drive(40) (or bigger), 256mb geforce 7300GS vid card (46), ASRock dual sata2 m/bo(42), cheap case +PSU about 35, cheap DVD RW is about 26 quid, xp home OEM about 60 quid, 17"TFT 140quid.

Mouse and keyboard- about 15 quid?

Total 578 inc vat from scan

And it'll play games ;)

2 fairly important questions first would have to be:
1) Do you want to play games with it (or at least is playing games at high reslolutions & all fancy features a priority, as even basic cards will PLAY games)?
2) Is easy upgradability an important requirement (ie spend £600 now but maybe another £100 in 6 months...)?

MESH offers this system for £499 and can be customised:
AMD Athlon™ 64 3200+ Processor
Genuine Windows® XP Home
ASUS A8N_VM PCI- X Mainboard
512MB DDR400 Memory
160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive
128MB GeForce 6100 Graphics
19" DVI Flat Panel TFT Display
Sony 16x Dual Layer DVD Writer
5.1 Channel Surround Sound Audio
Logitech Desktop KB & Optical Mouse
Classic Warranty-3Years parts & lab.

This seems to have onboard 6100 graphics but a spare PCI-E slot for upgradability.
Let me know about the above questions though.

The above reminds me, going through a company will almost certainly be better for this budget and a complete computer. Companies get discounts on components which are passed on for the budget price range, making home build a sometimes pricier alternative (that reverses at mid-high range though).

Just did a quick recalculation on the MESH system as above, changed the components to now be the following:
AMD Athlon™ 64 3500+ with HyperTransport Technology
Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition
Mini-Tower Micro ATX Case +250W PSU - Black
ASUS A8N-VM - Nforce 410 PCI-Express Mainboard - Micro ATX
512MB DDR400 Memory - PC3200 (2x256)
200GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB Buffer
SONY 16x Dual Layer DVD-Re-Writable +R/-R/RW
128MB nVIDIA GeForce 6100 PCI-Express - (onboard - non DVI)
19" TFT Flat Panel Monitor - DVI & Analogue
DVI connector Cable
5.1 Channel Surround Sound Audio-SoundMAX (on-board)
Creative Labs SBS260 - Stereo Speakers
Logitech Desktop Keyboard & Optical Mouse
Free Microsoft® Works® 8.5 + 60 Days Microsoft Office Trial
eTrust Antivirus ver 7 - 90 days Trial
Classic Warranty - 3 Years Back-to-Base - Parts & Labour

(Basically, upgraded CPU, hard drive, added a DVI cable and added basic speakers).
INCLUDING VAT & delivery, total = £609.45

Which is great if you're not gaming or doing much at once. But the build your own spec I listed has more ram and about a billion times faster gfx :p

Storage could be upgraded to 200-250gb within budget too ;)

Very true. Kalniel's is the better bet for the gamer. That said however, i recently posted about a recent build i made using onboard 6100 graphics with a Athlon 64 3200+ overclocked, and it plays UT2003 really well at 1280 x 1024 (OK, it's an old game, but i was impressed).
[Drum Roll] Which one will he go for [/Drum Roll] :)

Id suggest getting 1gig stick of ram aswell instead of 2x512 frees up dimms for later upgrade if 2gig is needed for vista

Meh, this is me being a complete numpty ..... forgot to say he already had mouse/kb, speakers and monitor! Sorry!!!

With that in mind, he is also looking for a fairly decent games machine, but future upgradability is probably limited due to budget so it would have to be as good as it can be now ...

Then just take off the monitor etc. costs, spend the money on a better case and PSU, a bigger HDD and a better gfx card (though to be honest, I think the 7300GS is probably still really good gaming for the money) :)