Of course building a PC would be far superior to buying a Dell.
But for $269, those uber-strapped on budget can get a disposable Dell that will have superior performance to some old Pentium II or Pentium III system with PC-66/100 memory LOL.
It'll be basically useless to upgrade and have no longevity, but it's a much wiser decision than to keep plunking cash into a long, long obsolete dinosaur of a PC. A $269-$299 Dell with integrated audio, ddr2 memory and >2ghz CPU will play Sims 2 a whole lot better than a Pentium 2/3.