Try a Mac, Joe! What have you got to lose? I just bought one of the old blue iMacs for £20, complete with keyboard , mouse, DVD-rom drive and a 20Gb external hard drive. Only OS9, with iWorks6 for Word-compatible word-processing, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro and iMovie.
It's capable of running OSX 10.4.11, and I'm sure you could find one going spare in California for a lot less than $100. Look for one with all the original discs and documentation. Lightly-used models last a lo-o-ong time. If the iMac hasn't got sufficient screen space, the big brother eMac has a 17" screen, also a faster G4 processor.

On offering this advice to other PC users, I have come across a reluctance to change based on the fear of a huge learning-curve to overcome before becoming familiar enough to just get on with what you want to do - but many operations and techniques seem fairly intuitive to me, and I think you would very rapidly figure out enough to get you going.

Good luck with whatever route you take.
Ross