Decision may be made as early as tonight. I pondered rebuilding what I have... but even getting her mid-range hardware puts me in the 300-400 range and that's re-using the PSU, video card, DVD drive, and case. And that stuff is 5 years old. And what if the problem is the PSU? I'd hate to buy all that stuff and find that to be faulty or have that die in another year. I think I just need to replace the whole thing.
I think a tower might be the way to go but the laptops are in the same range. Not that she needs the mobility, but it would be easy to hand that to the kids in a few years.
Decisions.
Oh, and even on top of the hard drive... the internet drops randomly several times a day on that computer so I'm thinking it's either a bad motherboard or something else. It wasn't a problem when I used it but was an issue since installing Windows 8. I replaced drivers several times to no avail. I don't think it's the powerline units either because it happened on the wireless too.