HP was running a deal too. If you are ready to buy and you want the best price possable. I might suggest to monitor the hot deal fourms (fatwallet.com is one of them), You'll see some pop up time to time.
About a month or so ago, there was an HP that had $400 off a $1000 PC, $699 got you a new full dual core, 9X nividia card, 3gb, 500gb, cable card ready, Media Center system with a single ATI cablecard tuner...
Wife said no for me at the time....
Nice thing about the HP is they use ATX boards, so if you wanted to transplant it to a HTPC case, you can do it with the HP but, not a Dell (BTX HTPC cases are very, very hard to find and rare)
HP is just ended a deal (so it looks)
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/288311.aspx
As for "used" they pop up on ebay time to time (XPS Dell), but, you can go into the Dell Outlet and get a better deal in 95% of the cases. Not easy to come up with...or find because not everyone will list "cable card ready", so you don't know, and with out the "cable card key" they wont work, even though the bios is there....
-Dave
MCP, MCSA, MCSE 2003
Windows Vista Connected Exp:Home Theater for Technologists
Windows Vista Connected Exp:Home Theater for Sales professionals
Home theater specialist (10+ years)