I bought my daughter a very nice Dell with a 13" screen. Very nice machine, classy finish and fast processor, loads of memory and disk space but more than double your budget.
However all of this hardware bling is totally undermined by the fact that it only comes with Vista OS. I wanted XP but they only sold with Vista onboard. It is the most frustrating and crap OS known to man. Or daughter. It keeps shutting down the computer. We spend half the time talking on the phone to Dell EMEA support, and they seem to be in Pakistan or somewhere. Considering Dell are a rather large entity I really thought if there were bugs they would/could fix them.
I was wrong.
I'm in the market for another computer soon but there is no effing way on God's earth I will buy anything loaded with vista. I'm looking at Macs right now although I have used PCs all my life.
Bottom line, whatever your budget and whatever you buy avoid the Vista [non]Operating System like the plague.
Joe
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