Buying a PC

[dh1]

Hi,
I need to buy a pc and printer for my ds. I'm fairly computer literate, as is my dw. We both have our own laptops and a dilapidated pc for the home, but it's been causing too much bother lately and taking up too much of our time trying to continually fix it up. So after much pfaffing about I've decided I should look at a new one.
I just KNOW I can get one which will do everything that we need it to i.e. give DS his own unfettered (within reason) acccess to a pc and the internet, while providing my dw and I with a good reasonable house pc facility (to run office and digital photo /video facilities etc...) for about ?300 - ?400 if I'm prepared to do the donkey work and spend a considrable amount of time researching it.
Before I do however...have any mumsnetters done this lately? What would you recommend? Has anybody bought or know of anyone who has bought a pc from either Asda or Tesco and if so, how have they gone, OK? Any problems?
Where to shop, where not to shop type advice would be much appreciated.
Many thanks all.

we got our son a hp one from currys not long ago, it was about £300 for the pc £100 for the monitor and seems to be fab! (much better than our more expensive one). we wanted one from tesco but they flew out of the shops!

Have you looked at Dell Outlet - their inventory PCs are usually extremely reasonably priced - most are ones that were built to spec then the customer changed their mind, some were warranty returns which were then refurbed, some were returned unopened.

Can generally get a lot higher spec machine for your money that way.

Thanks to you both - anybody else got any other ideas?