I don't think the XP install is full of "garbage." Most of this so called garbage is just some extra icons on the desktop. The programs or files attached to the icons are small, and if you don't like something, just uninstall it. What you get with this laptop are three disks for putting XP back on the computer. These are a drag, in that you will completely wipe the drive when you reinstall this way.
This is my first notebook computer and so far I really like it. Gamers should be aware that this display is pretty much a 1024 display. It will do 800 X 600 and 640 X 480 games, but it suffers a little in quality. For Internet, video editing, word processing, etc, this screen is perfectly fine. If you hook up an external monitor, your gaming results might be better. For $700 what can you expect. This $700 computer is much more valuable to me, than a $400 Geforce card. It is lots of computer for this price. Most families would be better off buying two of these computers instead of one $1500 notebook.
I got some PNY 256MB sodimm for $72 AR at Circuit City and it worked perfect. If you are ever going to do video editing, or you want to hook up a fast external Firewire drive, I highly recommend the IBM Firewire card that Computer Geeks is selling for $26. This card worked perfect with my Canon ZR20 and external Firewire/USB drive case that I got at Computer Geeks. With Media Studio Pro installed on my notebook, and a 60GB 7,200 rpm drive installed the Firewire case, you could literally edit a movie comparable to the "9-11" documentary that was on TV last Sunday. You can literally have a whole video studio right in your backpack. I am not kidding about this. For someone like me, who has edited movies for ten years, this is incredible.