background:

I was an Atari guy. Now I'm a Mac guy. Never owned a PC of any sort. BUT, I need to buy a PC. My wife and I need it for some non-music related things. But as long as we're going to have a PC, I might as well use it for some music as well. My main interest on the PC is ACID (which from what I understand doesn't require very much computer at all). However, if I could run some other audio stuff (gigasampler looks interesting, Samplitude too) that would be cool although not necessary.

Now, I'm about to drop some coin on a Mac dual800. You can't talk me out of it, I need it to run MOTU DP3 so don't go there. But unfortunately that doesn't leave much money left over for the PC. Say $1000 USD. Purchasing a PC is a little different than purchasing a Mac. LOTS of options. So...

questions:

What kind of processor should I be looking at? Celeron, PIII, PIV, AMD or whatever else is out there? What speed?

WIndows 98? 2000? And then there's ME, NT, XP, ABCDEFG... ! Help!

Stability is a priority. Do I "build a custom" machine or just buy one made from Dell or the like? Will a laptop do the job?

Is $1000 USD going to get me anything that'll at least do a decent job with ACID? Do I need to spend more? I understand that you get what you pay for, but I REALLY don't want to spend money I don't have to - the Mac is going to be my main computer. All I'm looking for in the PC is "decent" operation and stability. I don't care if it's the latest, fastest thing.

I'm sure many of you have different ideas on how to go about this. What I'm looking for is totally biased opinionated responses! But please base your opinions on your personal experiences! Please don't give me your "wish list". I'd rather know what you're using, how it works, what you like about it, and how much it cost! Thanks a lot in advance to anyone who responds!

Brent