system up to the task

technically it can, but seriously; it won't play well at all. 

$500, all it takes for a desktop (without monitor and stuff) that will happily play DG at (near) max settings.

yea, you can play it but the game will be very very slow.  8200m is a very crappy video card.  You need atleast 8600m or higher.

Any suggestions on what kind and where to get a desktop that is up to the task.

I would suggest a laptop with graphics card geforce 8600m or ati radeon 2600 or above.

Yes, a 8600 is the minimum for a "gamer"'s laptop. As you said, the 8200 is a crappy card.

Can I upgrade the graphics card in my laptop?  I'm looking at best buy and I can't find any for laptops.  With the laptop I have and an upgrade graphics card I would be able to play this game no problem?

Thx again for all your help.

I would suspect that your 8200M would be an integrated chip on the motherboard rather than a separate card, which may make upgrading difficult.

No you can't upgrade, in a laptop the graphic card is a chipset on the motherboard.

edit : didn't saw nights' post.

I have a p4 3.2ghz desktop that runs xp.  If I upgrade the ram to 2g and get a new graphics card then would it run smooth.

Also what graphics card could I get that is a reasonable price?

how much money do you have currently? $600 will net you a nice desktop that will run rings around all games bar Crysis.

its kinda tight right now.  Just got married.  Probably can't spend much more than $200.  You think i can upgrade my old desktop?

The specs look fine to me. It's far better than some of the test machines we have and it plays fine there.

are you talking about my laptop or desktop?

well I guess I should have listened to you guys.  I just preordered the game and played a few skirmishes against the AI.  I had it on high settings and it was pretty choppy.  I put it down to low and it still just seemed a bit slow.  Is that partially because its a beta and its a bit slow?  Or is it just my system?  Frogboy gave me the confidence to buy it and now I'm scared I made a mistake.

  It's your system.  According to this website,  your card is rank #116.

The card I recommend 8600m is rank #65.  The recommended system requirements GeForce 7600 by stardock is rank #73.

notebook graphics ranking:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

Demigod system requirements:

https://store.stardock.com/product.aspx?productid=ESD-TGN-W293

Don't bother wasting money upgrading your desktop intel P4.  It'll be the bottlenect and the game will just be as slow.  Time to get a new laptop.

Is there a desktop that you could recommend that is around $500 that would play everything well?

If you can build your own, then he's a link to tom's hardware $625 machine.  You can get it down to $500 if you get a cheaper cpu (e5200) and cheaper motherboard.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-2-overclock,2113.html