I live in the UK and I bought my present machine, a Compaq Presario, from a local computer store (PC World) about 3 years ago. I bought it in a sale just after Xmas. About a year ago it developed a fault on the DVD dual drive but that was fairly easy and cheap to replace - that is the only problem I've had.
I'm sure that techies are either sneering or crying with laughter at this but consider that my machine came with really excellent documentation and was easy to set up and use 'out-of-the-box'. It does everything I want it to do and runs all of the software that I need (including photo-editing software). It didn't come with all of the potential hassles I associate with mail-order and if it had developed a fault, during the warranty period, all that I would have had to have done was stick in the boot of the car and take it back to the shop.

The spec on this machine is: 2.17GHz Athlon AMD processor, 512 MB DDR RAM and a 120GB hard drive. I probably paid roughly what you are prepared to pay (although without monitor, keyboard and mouse). Obviously, things have moved on a lot since then so you could probably get a lot of computer for your budget.

I think that Compaq have been taken over by HP. For the record I've got an HP printer and an HP scanner - I like them a lot!