I have an XPS M1710, and it works like a charm, but he said he wanted more power. True, if I had the cash I would do the same. I am extremely pleased with my XPS and while I was at school it provided excellent work + entertainment value.

I found Voodoo PC a bit too voodoo for my style, at least. He said he's taking Voodoo into consideration, but I personally do not like them because the only option is AMD processors, which are kind of bad.

WidowPC and Falcon NW are his choices.

I was thinking at one moment of buying a custom built Falcon NW desktop but I got a straight answer: forfeiting any other birthday gifts until I finish school.
It would have provided some excellent entertainment but I'll prolly switch from gaming sometime in the future so there was no use spending 9000 on something and living like a spartan afterwards. The desktop was a monster which would be at least medium-power in 6-7 years, with 2.3GB of video and 8GB of RAM.