I wouldn't recommend Home Basic to anyone. Might as well stick with XP
While Vista Home Basic has a few more features than XP, it is an entry level OS and you would be better served going with Home Premium at a minimum, given it(and Ultimate) has extras such as DVD support and Media Center, etc.
Also, being that you're considering going with a quad core, you're not likely to experience the performance issues some people report with the more powerful/resource intensive features of Premium/Ultimate on lesser powered machines... and with x64 you can fully access 4gb+ of RAM as well, so wouldn't it be a bit of a shame/somewhat a waste installing an entry level OS on
more than just adequate hardware?
It's entirely up to you, of course, but my nephew has Home basic on his machine and he says that he feels restricted and wishes now that he had spent the bit extra to have gone with Home Premium at the least... after seeing all the extras I have in Ultimate, I think he sees his copy of Home basic as too much of an anti-climax.