I did just get a new HP desktop. Paid $600. My other one was 8 years old. I like to piddle around with little animations and the like. My old machine was getting a little quirky, and I couldn't see putting money into it.
Plus my editing program kept crashing. And it seemed to take forever to burn a dvd.
Here is one animation. Not really all that good. But they keep me entertained.
Maybe when I get rich I'll get a Mac.
For that same $600 you could have gotten a Mac Mini, which sports a 500 GB HDD, i5 Chipset with 2.24 GHz Dual core processor and 2 GB of RAM. Then I'd hop to Amazon and bump it to 8 GB of RAM for $40. This comes with OSX Lion, and plenty of included applications. The Mac Mini is quite a little powerhorse, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Thunderbolt, USB2, Firewire800 and all in the box the size of an old cigar box; practically silent.