Don't go with Pentium. It is proven that AMD Athlon, at a slower speed ie. 1.6ghz runs faster than a Pentium @ 2GHZ.
And if you want speed with your CPU, go with the Athlon 64, its pricey, but then again it would last you a long time. FSB is good, the faster the better.
The more memory the better as well, you can close down and open programs much much faster. 512 should be enough to last you a while, since you wont be doing too much downloading. (yeah right!
)
-Justin.