$1500 is a good budget for high bang per buck.

The problem is the sweet spot keeps moving. Example a i7-950 computer chip dropped $600 a few months ago: went from $1000 to $279. It is a enthusiast chip that can be hot-rodded from stock 3ghz to 4 ghz reliably. (when you start thinking the thing is slow jump in the BIOS and step up the voltage 0.100 V and presto be rewarded with a 33% jump in speed for free) It will run hotter and die sooner but it's already a year old...

I typically buy general class computers off the shelf from HP, Dell, Best Buy. The primary reason is price is hard to beat & no labor involved. The second reason is the manufacturer of a Dell mainstream motherboard also makes the HP motherboards in their factories. FOXCONN in China has 300,000 employees... Ever wonder where the ipad is manufactured?? Hard drives, video cards, same o same o...  Really the differences between manufacturers boils down to looks, customer service and utility software (I like Lenovo thinkvantage the best)

My personal desktop tends to be sweet spot top shelf assembled from parts over time. I would not buy a top shelf machine from the mainstream retailers because the inventory is 2-3 months old and the sweet spot has moved. Example it makes no sense to buy a high end desktop with a mechanical boot drive. 64GB Solid State Drives have dropped to $99 and give you near instant performance. I saw a Dell 9100 (outlet maybe) with a nosebleed 5970 AMD Radeon video card with two 2TB mechanical HDD's discounted well over $1000 but still selling for ~$3K. Two $99 SSD's could beat the pants off it. SSD boot drives not available yet. --  but then Dell has to warranty the AMD Radeon video card which my experience has horrible software drivers & does not play nice with other parts...

Why not look at a $1000 system that does not sound lke a Boeing 737 on takeoff or throw off enough heat for a small house, put together here with current sweet spot pricing www.tomshardware.com then go over to http://30inchlcds.com/ and get a big honkin' monitor for the movie experience.

Reference Toms: buy the parts here www.tigerdirect.com www.microcenter.com  and watch hourly specials at www.newegg.com and do it yourself... Or be lazy & let www.techbargains.com email do your price shopping automatically...Easy as painting a room in the house these days.

The old days lots of cooks stirred the pot and the results were maddening. Only the strong have survived the purges in the electronics industry. With the exception of AMD Radeon video cards everything just plugs in and plays nicely together.