A $499 machine with those specs is not a money loser. You could get a PC at Wal Mart for $100 less. Oops, spoke too soon: Wal Mart's cheapest PC these days is $188: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=3356850
That's bare bones with no hard drive, no CD ROM, no floppy, not enough memory .... What's the OS?
"Not included: hard drive, CD-ROM drive, modem, floppy disk drive, operating system"
Yeah, but most ordinary folk would probably want to purchase a PC that could actually work...this one "as-is" is useless.