solid mobo
Does that mean, 'good mother board' ?

Hard drive is to your liking but I would recommend sata.
Does that mean,

'Be sure to have a big hard drive (160+ Gig) and I recommend Sata,' = a brand of hard drive makers' ?

os = Operating system

I would suggest any flavor of linux. Fedora is a nice easy to learn system. Gentoo is a bit harder to install but runs a wee bit faster.
My Google search tells me that Gentoo is a type of Linux.
http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/about.xml

I haven't yet asked, but the programmer I am commissioning for the project might not know how to use that.


The AMD 64 is $745.

I take it that is a superior form of what the Pentium4 does?

Thank you for helping me learn...