Thanks everyone, your posts have been really helpful. I wanted to order the guts of my systems this weekend, and thought I'd run a selection by you. I already have the case and 450watt power supply on order (found a killer deal). Basically, if I'm going to spend money on anything, I'm thinking the motherboard should be the thing I should splurge on since everything else is so easy to upgrade. I'd hate to build a system, and then have the motherboard be my limiting factor (i.e., if I wanted to go with serial ATA down the road).

Initially, I had built a system on newegg.com that included the following motherboard and processor as a combo deal that saved me 20 bucks. The deal is no longer offered, so here are the two seperately:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=13-128-259&depa=0
And
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=13-128-259&depa=0

Also, I notice they have this deal today on this processor:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=19-103-342&DEPA=0

So, basically, my question is: Is there anything that you'd recommend at this price point instead of these guys? I don't mind spending the amound I've picked out, but since I don't know much about hardware, I wanted to be sure that there wasn't anything else out there for the same money that was a better way to go.

EDIT: It looks like they are offering some sort of motherboard and CPU deal again, one with a video card, that may be the same as the one that I let slip by:
http://newegg.com/app/combspecial.asp?listtype=bundle