Well, the build-a-computer project may be pushed back even farther. I just purchased a Dell GX620 for about one bill. It has the good stuff I had been hankering for - a Gig of DDR2, 2.0 USB, with 6 in back and 2 in front. 2 USABLE ports in front, as opposed to these old Gateways and this old Dell with the funky grey door in front.
It should be a good fit, because I already have the XP Pro install disk and drivers/utilities disk for this particular model.
Now, I'm just going to buy a student-license copy of MS Office, and some moar RAMs for these old machines, and maybe a spare monitor, and this outbreak of computer stuff-getting will probably subside for a while.