My kids have a Compaq PC I bought on clearance at buy.com. buy.com has some good deals sometimes on desktops in their clearance section (but I just hopped over there and they didn't have any right now). I wouldn't recommend the Compaq over Dell, but I got it at a great price.
Dell does have a refurb section, but their prices haven't knocked my socks off vs. a new Dell.
You can also check www.overstock.com if you are looking for lowest price.
Be careful of Best Buy's web site if the PC you want has a rebate. I got burned by them - I wanted a laptop that had a $100 rebate advertised on the web site. I went to a Best Buy store and they didn't have any, so I ordered it through the web site. Later, I printed out the rebate form and it said "in-store purchases only"! I now only shop there as a last resort - I felt it was false advertising to show a rebate on the web site and then disallow it when you purchase through the site. They won't burn me again.
I'm not sure how much you want to spend, but I've become a big fan of notebooks as desktop replacements, especially with wireless networking cards. You can get a new decently configured notebook in the $700 - $1000 range.
My parents also have a Dell and haven't had any problems(5 months). I got an Alienware back in 99(expensive but great service and quality).
http://www.openoffice.org/
If you are in one of the above states, they will even loan you the computer.
"While MPC continues to exist on the fringe of the U.S. top 10 portable PC vendor list (according to preliminary 1Q03 shipment totals), the Idaho-based company has nevertheless succeeded in carving out a profitable niche for itself by focusing on the government and SMB segments." IDC, PC Weekly: May 15, 2003
For the last several years, I've been buying computers for friends, family and work, including various high and low end Windows, Mac and Linux boxes. I always start at Resellerratings.com. The top resellers vary over the years, but whomever is currently highly ranked has always provided excellent systems, with excellent service.
You will find various resellers listed, for notebooks, windows deskside, memory, high end case cooling, software, and even digital cameras. They have some other categories such as pet food and clothing as well, but they are strongest in the computer ratings.
For a typical list, see the following list of 25 entries, which has resellers that rate at least 9.6 (of 10) with at least 30 reviews posted: Computer 9.6 Rating, 30 Reviews. Any reseller on this list will almost certainly provide you with better product and service, and the same or better price, than Dell. Of the main brands, Dell is good; they beat Gateway and EMachines for sure. HP isn't bad.
Then just browse this list of resellers, until you find one that strikes your fancy.
Glancing at this list, I suspect that any of the dealers Envision Computer Solutions, Puget Custom Computers, or Monarch Computer Systems would have the kind of system you seem to be looking for: a Windows deskside prebuilt low end system.
I used Dell boxes at work (along with various others) and while they are ok, Dell does custom select the lowest cost components it can find to fit a certain model, leading to some unusual systems that won't always run all the software I throw at it (such as some prerelease Linux stuff). They will run Windows just fine, so it might not matter to you that they are built more like a Toyota Tercel than a Lexus.
The pre-built boxes from the top rated sites on Resellerratings.com use name-brand, recognized components, resulting in a system that is more adaptable to upgrades and such, which probably matters more to me than you.
But they will compete directly with Dell on price, and beat them on service hands down.
You don't care whether its an AMD (Athlon, ...) or Intel (Celeron, ...) processor. You don't care whether it's 1.9 GHz or 3.1 GHz. My teenage son playing Doom cares, but that's not your need. Any amount of disk is probably plenty; it's hard to find a disk smaller than 40 GBytes anymore, and I for one have not yet managed to fill up that much disk space (well, except at work, where I help manage a couple Terabytes of store ..)
You do want Windows XP, and you do want to bump the memory up to 512 Mbytes. And as someone else noted, you do want to consider purchasing the monitor locally, if you are likely to be at all sensitive to what you see. Well, actually not. I'm not a practiced reviewer of monitors, so I do a separate search for monitor reviews when I need one, and rely on reviews that I find on the Web for them. I trust the reviews more than my own eyes. But most folks don't feel comfortable with that approach.
For a specific example, I see a Monarch 2000+ System Special at Monarch Computer Systems with Windows XP, Memory upgraded to 512 Mb total, and 1 Year Parts & Labor (no monitor) for $522.
If you're a patient penny pincher, you should be able to get this price tag close to $400, somewhere on one of these sites.
My present box is an ABS P-IV. If you want real power, look at Alienware or Falcon Northwest. Ain't cheap but you get what you pay for.
Look at "second tier" makers who have been advertising in Computer Shopper for over 10 years.
--Boris