Wow, that's a tough one.
You expect MacNN people recommend you a PC system

Sorry, conflict of interest...

But seriously, I don't know too much about PCs.

From what I know, the difference between the Athlon 2.2 and Pentium 3.0 shouldn't be too great. It's for a reason that Athlon names them 3400+, to indicate how they would compare with a Pentium.

HP might not be the worst choice, still better thean a Dell...

-t