Need help on choosing new computer for under $1000 Options

[mrgrape]

so yeah im moving out and going to community college
I am getting 500 from my dad..... im thinking about building a computer but not really sure
can anyone reccomend me a new computer w/monitor or a good laptop?
thanks!

[Taskbot]

if you really want a cheap build all you need is a mobo, cpu, ram and hard drive. (of course a monitor keyboard and everything else).

I priced out a quadcore AMD build with an Asus mobo (onboard video/sound for now) 80GB HDD 1 gig ram for about $350.
Everything is really plug and play. All you need is an operating system, which can be installed to a USB drive (Linux works well for this however XP also works [since people have gotten XP onto an eeePC which lacks optical drives, I assume its possible])
If you really need an optical drive, they're dirt cheap aswell (like $20-$40 for a DVD-R drive)


However this is just my own style of computing, I like to think small, efficient and econo.
I own an Acer Aspire One sub-notebook and I run Ubuntu 8.04 on it. It gets the job done but its kind of hard dealing with the SSD (Solid State Drive) and the Intel Atom.