Most people stopat 1800 or 1900 instead of going all the way to 2000. Prices are continually dropping and money saved is money available later if you're one of the 99.9% of people who have budgets. Compare the actual Mhz of the XPs and you won't see a significant difference. Just under 300Mhz compared to the 400Mhz difference available in Athlon models, proportionately it's even less of a variety. What I'm saying is paying triple for something only slightly better is fine if you have money to burn or investments that will actually pay for the huge expenditure.
I assume that is one of the (few) motherboards that has integrated ATA133, so I have no better suggestion.
Are you really going to watch DVDs?
Get a writer, yup. I think Plextor and Sony are good brands
Anything that doesn't say Winmodem on it, better yet go highband
Video card is the hardest decicion you can make. If the high end nVidia cards come down in price they are a sure bet. Otherwise Radeon 8500 owners seem to be pretty happy, but you do still see horror stories related to ATI products and almost none with nVidias.
If you plan to get lots of RAM, Win XP pro can maintain more than any other OS I know of. Do get lots of RAM, err except it's sooo expensive right now.
