Dell for web design
Well, I had a lot of ideas until you specified your budget.
I thought it would please many here for me to share my recent Dell purchase attempt. I was in the market for a midsize LCD HDTV. The refurbished Dell W3000C...
Hmm, well, you probably won't need dual core but it's out now so from that perspective I think it's a good time.
What kind of web design do you want to do? As a hobby I buttume it's static HTML, with maybe some Photoshop or Flash? That's about as far as I'd want to go for fun. (to me, JavaScript, Java, .NET are not fun -- that's work).
I don't think web design will be taxing your resources. I think it would be good to look at what other things you might want to use your computer for. Would you like a nice sound card to listen to your MP3's, a large hard disk to store them?
If budget were not an issue for any kind of design programming having dual monitors has always been useful. Right now I have a 2405FPW (1200 x 1920 portrait) and a 2001FP (1600 x 1200) and for the first time I'm happy with screen real estate :-)
Otherwise, two smaller monitors is better (for the way I do things) than one larger monitor.
Have fun, and let us know what you get,
Journey