I've been very happy with this machine, although I did have to return the first machine I received because of problems with the on-board firewire. Basically, Device Manager showed the firewire controller in an error state (yellow exclamation point) and despite my very best efforts - including a complete system restore - nothing would fix it. I contacted Compaq support (which was provided from India) and after an hour on the phone with them, they too were stumped. I contacted Radio Shack the next day and they were very accommodating about exchanging the machine out for a new one. Fortunately, I hadn't submitted any of my rebates yet, so this made the exchange process easier.
The new machine has been flawless. I added an old Visiontek GeForce3 card I had lying around and I bought another 256mb of RAM at Newegg which is running in dual channel mode with the original 256mb of RAM. With the GeForce3 and the added RAM, this machine really flies! I'm *very* happy with the performance - especially considering the budget price! I should note that the machine is very quiet in it's stock configuration. The hard drive produced most of the audible emissions until I added my GeForce3 card which now dominates the audible output.
Here's a link to the RAM I bought -->
http://tinyurl.com/4cnhg. I know there are probably better deals on RAM out there, but $41 isn't too bad IMO for a quality stick of RAM that I can report runs well in dual-channel mode.
A couple comments of possible interest: In the first machine I received, the exhaust fan on the rear of the case was not properly connected to the fan header on the motherboard. Therefore, the exhaust fan wasn't running. It was a simple fix (just plug the darn thing in correctly), but it's something that might go unnoticed without close inspection. The tip-off that clued me in to this problem was that the CPU fan (which seems to be a variable speed fan) kept kicking into high speed mode periodically. I checked the CPU temp in BIOS and it was hovering around 60-61 deg C. This seemed a bit hot to me, so I opened the case and discovered that the exhaust fan wasn't running. Once the exhaust fan was properly connected and running, the CPU temp dropped by 6 deg C. A few other things I'll quickly mention - the first machine I recieved had an older BIOS (v3.02), while the second machine had the latest BIOS (v3.03) already installed. The first machine came with a Lite-On CD-RW drive while the second came with a Sony. The first machine came with a CoolerMaster HSF, while the second came with a Taisol.
Well, that's about it. Like I said earlier, I'm extremely happy with this little beast. I didn't mean to ramble on so long, but I just thought I'd share my experience (it's a slow day at work).
-krypt0