This doesn't answer your question exactly, but...
I recently bought a (now discontinued- but the acessories are available) Compaq Presario 15" TFT, 1.2 ghz PIII, 512mb RAM, DVD, CD-RW, and a 64mb video card and all the usual modems, firewire etc. with XP directly from Compaq in an auction. I paid £1100 and the retail would have to be closer to £2k for that spec, I would think.
Might be worth having a squizz at either the Compaq auction site or the dabs.com site (i'm not advertising, honest!). It's quite a heavy machine but I'm very pleased with it.