Thanks for all the responses.

Falcon

Build your own, cheaper, faster, better.

If not Dell works pretty good.

Macs are way too much.

LOL ghoti thats so stereotypical yet very true!  ;D ;D

If it were me,

Apple Mac if you are not attached to windows.

Dell otherwise.

I've put together several and tuned up a lot of my friends machines, several of which were Dells. They make those machines with mini motherboards (mainboards) that have very little in the way of expansion capabilities. You can't buy the bottom line one and add to it.

However, since you're replacing one that was purchased in 1997, then I'll assume you have NO plans to add to this machine in the next year or two. If so, then buy a Dell and get the most you can afford.

Focus on getting alot of system memory (RAM) at least 4 GB, get XP installed (DEMAND this unless you've used Vista and actually like it ), a pretty good video card (512 MB) dual core or quad core processor and about 500 GB Hard Drive. Also, get the biggest monitor (LCD) that you can afford. You want a fast response time for the monitor as well; like 2 milliseconds.

Anything more than 3 gb's of ram and you are wasting you are wasting your money, unless you buy the 64 bit version of XP/Vista. 32 bit XP/Vista can't see the full 4gb of ram and won't be able to use it.

Go with the Dell and like cfff 1.5 says demand the XP.

Nothin better than an IMac. (IMO)

Would never buy another computer again.  I am no computer genius, but have never had any problems with mine, and with an Apple store so close, any small problem, or issue is dealt with so quickly.