The only thing I see that I probably would drop would be the firewall software. I have had much more luck with hardware firewalls - a good router will do the trick. Take that $60 and buy a good Linksys router. It will be easier to troubleshoot, upgrade, won't bog your system down, and won't bombard you with subscription updates and upgrades.

I guess it would ultimately come down to what your brother wants to do with a computer. Is he going to play games with it? What kinds? Some games require that your system be top of the line, other games require that your network connection be top speed. It just depends. Is he going to be doing software development? Again, it will depend on what kind of software he's writing. If it's CSS/XML stuff, he won't need much. If it's high-end XNA/C# stuff using MVS2K8, well, he'll need more of a system. Most of the time, however, these machines are used for relatively "light" computing - it's basically an e-mail machine that can also play movies. Because he's getting a 22" screen, I'm guessing he's not even going to be watching movies.

If you find the above to be true, I would argue that it's much more beneficial to buy a Dell laptop. They can be had for around $500, and you'll probably get 3 years out of it if he takes good care of it. But again, it just depends on what he's going to do with it.

My 2 cents.........