if you want to get raped on a system you will go to a store; best buy, compusa, etc.
if you want to research parts and motherboards and such online you can build a killer system for the price you are looking for, maybe a little more, maybe a little less.
you can get a DELL that will MORE THAN HANDLE what you need and select the NO MONITOR option. get their lowest priced workstation and you can definately get what you want with pentium 4, 512, etc. for around $450.
Regardless of what you buy today, you will be getting more power than what you need. it won't take much at all for email, internet and digital photos! i'm using DELL in my recording studio as well as my video production suite as well as my photo lab (all digital of course.) we also have a couple laptops for everyday apps, as you have mentioned above.
what i tell all my family and friends is, there are no bad pc's to buy...anything you buy will more than handle what you need to do. i would suggest DELL. when i'm not building pc's, i'm buying DELL (and of course upgrading them as needed; ram, HD, video capture cards, etc.) have fun.
if you want to research parts and motherboards and such online you can build a killer system for the price you are looking for, maybe a little more, maybe a little less.
you can get a DELL that will MORE THAN HANDLE what you need and select the NO MONITOR option. get their lowest priced workstation and you can definately get what you want with pentium 4, 512, etc. for around $450.
Regardless of what you buy today, you will be getting more power than what you need. it won't take much at all for email, internet and digital photos! i'm using DELL in my recording studio as well as my video production suite as well as my photo lab (all digital of course.) we also have a couple laptops for everyday apps, as you have mentioned above.
what i tell all my family and friends is, there are no bad pc's to buy...anything you buy will more than handle what you need to do. i would suggest DELL. when i'm not building pc's, i'm buying DELL (and of course upgrading them as needed; ram, HD, video capture cards, etc.) have fun.