Definitely too expensive IMO for what you get. For total customability and price reduction, go with newegg and build it yourself. Another great site more in the flavor of what you're looking for is mwave.com. They will build you a barebones system of your choice, with quite a few components to choose from for free (test it as well before shipping it). In a lot of cases, that would be cheaper than even going with newegg, chiefvalue, zipzoomfly, etc.
With their barebones systems you can have them include: case, motherboard, processor, memory, 1 optical drive, and 1 floppy drive. So in a basic/normal system the only things you would need to install yourself would be a hard drive and video card. (plus anything extra you want such as an extra optical drive, hard drive, sound card, etc.) Also, of course the monitor, keyboard, and mouse they don't include either. Mwave is also highly regarded so don't worry about that.
