Watch out for VISTA pre-installed................it very possibly will be the watered down version and you will not get all the features you might expect.
And this "VISTA READY" is also shaky. VISTA is coming out with Direct X 10. yes vista will be called ready but to get full advantage of x10 you will need an X10 video card.
Please be advised to be sitting down when you check prices of X 10 cards...........example: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX with 128mb GDDR3 memory and direct x 10 = $600
Unless you are hard core gamer or an early adapter, VISTA full blown version ($259, upgrade version ) and a new vid card and you should have minimum of 2G good memory, is not cheap.
Trading on the phone was no need to get a pc, but commissions are WAY lower for futures, a trade off.........
PS, and also to use a x10 card you will need a pci-express X 16 open slot on that new motherboard you will need.........AGPX8 will not get ther job done.