as a general rule, you should be looking for as bigger a hardrive as you can get, 40gigs is a good start, memory you would want at least 256+. depending on whether you are playing any games or not will determine what spec video card you should aim for, if your not bothered about gaming then anything like a 16meg, 32meg card will keep costs down and still give good quality whilst being able to give good display rates, dont get caught up with CD rewriters cos they cost peanuts nowadays and are piss easy to install,(£15-20notes, for a cd writer, £45 for a dvd writer).
like i said dont get carried away with software, cos i hopefully get you most stuff, if i cant then you should be able to find iton the net,

that auction ounds cool, plus he says he never got the stand to stand the PC upright, but i can give you one of these for nowt anyway
monitors i can sort you a 17" if you want, but TFT's are going for about £80 ish