Remember that most undergraduate students will be in schools for 4 years. Given the pace of new software and hardware development, a student that buys a low end computer now may need to purchase a more powerful machine in a couple of years. We anticipate a major price reduction in for Pentium Ibises computers around September 2000. An AGP graphics card is much faster than non-PCI adapters and faster than PCI adapters. Non-interlaced mode helps to reduce flicker in the monitor that can cause eyestrain and headaches.
Dot pitch measures the space between pixels.
The bottom line is that it should be comfortable for you to look at it for long stretches of time. EIDE is a lower end standard for hard disks and the Ultra ATA drives are rapidly replacing them. If you have sufficient financial resources, you can consider a SCSI-based disk but you would be better off spending the money on a bigger hard disk, more RAM, or better video. Should have at least 2 serial ports and 1 parallel port or USB ports for Windows 2000 6. Should include a mouse and Windows NT, Windows 2000 or 98.