Ehh...I'm not a big fan of Dell's. They're...expensive. When my parents bought my sister a college computer, they went straight to Dell (haha...). I think the computer started out WELL over $2000...then when we downgraded the monitor, got rid of the speakers, reduced the processor, it was around $2000. I could have built the same system for less.
The one thing I like about building one yourself is you can make it as awesome as possible. Check out some of this stuff:
Two beautiful Lian-Li cases:
http://store4.yimg.com/I/xoxide_1730_733867
http://www.onepc.net/images/docs/157/pic.jpg
Those are two of my fav. cases.
I'm going for a mad-fast system. No less than 512mb of RAM (why would you want less? It's so cheap...fill your memory bank!) Fastest AMD on the market... Anyone know if there are any motherboards with a blue PCB? That would be cool
(Or at least SOMETHING besides dingy green..) Then a top (or near-top) of the line NVidia card...since they have better Linux support than ATI. It's going to be a kickin' college machine
You won't find that kind of stuff on Dells