I had almost no problems when I use to (probably 6-12 months ago) do Zakum and HornTail runs with my Dell Inspiron E1505, which has the following:
If a four year old laptop can handle it, I expect a lot "everyday computing" configurations to be fine with what is currently available.
I've priced components on Newegg and figure a decent build would cost around your price range.
- Intel Core Duo @ 1.73Ghz (533Mhz FSB and 2MB L2 cache)
- 2GB DDR2 RAM @ 533Mhz
- ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 (128MB dedicated RAM)
If a four year old laptop can handle it, I expect a lot "everyday computing" configurations to be fine with what is currently available.
I've priced components on Newegg and figure a decent build would cost around your price range.