My price quoted is with a DVD burner. His was without. Also to reply to your other comment about this being 50% more then a PC for an equivalant PC. No way!!! Do not compare the MHZ of a PC to that of an iMAC it isn't the same thing at all. If you were to take an 800MHZ iMAC you would need a 1.4GHZ PC to even come close.
Without extensive price shopping, I found a dual AMD 1.9 gHz motherboard with processors and 1 gig DDR error-correcting memory for under $1000 total. About @500 more would fill out the system. DDR memory is twice as fast as SDRAM, which is what the Macs use.
Any number of web merchants will allow you to pick the components you want for a PC and will assemble and install the OS for free.
The Superdrive (DVD burner) is currently selling for about $500 for PCs. By summer it will be around $300.
Argue convenience and beauty all you want, but be careful about arguing price/performance. And please don't keep comparing the wonders of OSX with Win95. It has been 7 years since Win95.