Desktops: first complete build am i missing anything???

ummm....not really missing anything, but...

Hey buddy! Congrats on building a computer! I have built two and have had mixed success, and I do have some suggestions.

First of all, I noticed that your price quoted for your cpu for example, was quite high. I would check www.newegg.com for quotes. I have bought through them many times, and they are extremely reliable, have great prices, great customer service and their shipping is outstanding...give it a shot! Also, i have worked with amd extensively, and while their clock speed is not as high as pentium, their frontside bus is much faster, allowing the motherboard to handle more data at the same time than the p4. Also, amd's are cheaper, I would recommend an xp.

You also mentioned that you would be adding a floppy drive. I would go away from this. I never use floppys anymore. I purchased a 256MB jump drive and am very pleased with how it has handled my data needs. A few reasons:
1) floppys are unreliable
2) floppys have a small amount of space available.
3) floppys are extremely slow

My jump drive was $30 and makes data transfer between computers very easy, and with a usb 2.0 connection, you can transfer 256mb of data or more in less time than it takes a floppy to slide its door open.

Current needs of a computer necessitate more RAM-the more the better (within reason of course). I would suggest no less than a gigabyte of RAM. You would be fine by buying another stick of the same kind (2x512). I mulitask, and for an experienced, power user, the RAM can be used up pretty quick (especially keeping in mind the proggies that run in the background.)

Good mobo choice! Asus rocks. Gigabyte also.

Go with windows xp pro. i dont have a reason other than the crap that comes bundled with it is pretty much useless, and pro is more streamlined. make sure sp2 works also, it's been known to crash some computers. make sure to get spybot s&d (a free spyware utility) and antivirus (nod 32 is the best, it finds things norton doesnt find!) run both programs in safe mode (sometimes the virus and spyware dont boot up in this case).

most importantly, get the most updated parts you can! the faster the better! newegg runs specials everyday and you can find some great deals.

finally, good luck on building your computer. I hope my little post helped you out!