Honestly, I've never been a huge fan of Dell. They don't lend themselves to upgrading very easily in the future.

In general though:

~Definitely try for a quad-core or i7 processor if you plan on keeping the machine a few years.

~64 bit is mandatory for anything over 3.5 Gb Ram. (64bit is good for up to 128Gb!)

~ Absolutely forget a 250G 5400RPM hard drive. You're better off with a faster drive speed and smaller drives if price is that important. (think of shovelling 100 tons of dirt alone, or 50 tons with a helper!) Faster drives will cut seek and store times wayyyyyy down. This is especially important if you plan on doing a lot of photo editing.

~Don't let the Dell "freebie" printer's sway your decision. The replacement ink cartridges for Dell printers cost a fortune.

~You have no mention of the video card. You really want a stand-alone card.....not the "on-board" graphics card/accelerator. Usually the "on-board" systems use the computer RAM instead of having their own. Preferably a stand-alone card running on a PCI-E x16 slot. This also allows you to upgrade in the future if necessary. I personally use nothing other than Nvidia.

Hope this helps.