[MikeDubreuil]

Originally Posted by Max Lobovsky

As a guy who does tech support for money and has built and upgraded a good few PCs, my advice would be to not build a PC unless you want to do it for the sake of doing it. Unless you pirate software, the price advantage is rather slim.

If you're in college check with your Office of Information Technology (computer admins) to see if you can get discount software. My school has a very large Microsoft Campus Agreement where students can get Microsoft software for almost the cost of the media. I have bought Windows XP, Office XP, and Visual Studio .Net all for around $20 from my school.