Well, the first one comes with an OS, but has a slightly smaller hard drive and less ram, but the 2gb should be fine, if your friend doesn't want to play any hard core games or anything.

If your friend can install windows, the second one would be better, seeing as its $100 cheaper, and the cheapest vista costs around $100, you end up with better hardware for the same price.

 

Those deals aren't all that great. Decent-ish, but it sounds like these aren't exactly power users.

I know some will hate on Dell, but they're probably you're best bet for n00bs.

A few days ago there was this deal:

Which is bigger hard drive, more RAM, and a 19" LCD as compared to your first link at the same price. But I think that deal's already dead. Just peruse techbargains desktop deals here to find them something.

 

I go for build it yourself in desktops. Whilst I recommend Dell for Laptops.

Although Dell have some decent systems when using a voucher to get the cheap cheap stuff.

 

Not sure about now, but Dell's outlet use to have some decent bargains.

I am still running the scratch and dent desktop I picked up $250 about 3-4 years ago... well, my mom is still running it.

 

For Sins of a Solar Empire, they'd need a better graphics card than that, I think.

Dunno about the Civilization games, though.

Narion

 

350 Watt Power Supply

NVIDIA GeForce 6100 GPU

If they are wanting to game, it sounds like they are about to run into some headaches.