I have not seen so much of a savings by building your own computer in price
but upgradeability, proformace, and quality of parts. The companies who build
computers do so many with so little profit margin that they "slap" together
as many of them as they can to get it to make money. So i have seen many
computers even Dell that have not been worth the money spent. Also a lot of
the parts used are proprietary or intergraded parts so an upgrade is
extremely difficult to accompish. As far as free programs go depending on
what she is going to need the list sounds real good but i did not see a word
processing program on it. Sun has there version of Star Office for free
download at   http://www.sun.com/download/    it is suppose to work just a
well as microsoft (with a few bugs) and even has support to save in a format
that microsoft word can read. I have tried it and it seems to work real well
from what i could tell. It comes with a word, spread sheet and a couple of
other programs.

Bradley Marden
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      "Hold No Punches.." Rode brings you great shareware/freeware
        programs with his honest opinions in this weekly column.
                       http://freepctech.com/rode