It took mere hours for my baseline Vostro PC to be bettered, thanks in no small part to blog reader Tom A pointing me in the direction of Ebuyer’s pre-built PC section. There, for a penny-perfect £249.99 inc VAT and delivery, sat the Zoostorm Versatile Premium PC which now tops my shortlist.

The specs improve on the Vostro:

• 2.2GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2200
• 2GB DDR2
• 250GB hard disk 
• DVD writer
• mouse & keyboard
• Vista Home Premium
• 1yr warranty

Ebuyer also had several others even cheaper than that, including the same system with a Celeron Dual-Core and Vista Home Basic for £209.83, as well as a low-power Fujitsu Siemens PC with lesser components and no operating system for £189.97. Neither really piqued my interest.

One other system that did intrigue me was one of Ebuyer’s own with an almost identical specification to the Zoostorm, but with a hefty 4GB of RAM. I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw the price of £199.99, until I realised it comes without an operating system. It’s a dilemma I’ve had at several other sites too.

Now, an OEM copy of Vista costs more than the £50 I’d have left, so should I go the Linux route and spend it on other extras instead? I’m reluctant to. The remit was to buy an everyday PC for £250 and – I’ll be honest here, don’t hit me – I’m just not sure I’d want to use Linux every day. Vista has it’s many annoyances but it would have to crawl out of my screen and wedge my keyboard somewhere uncomfortable to make me go so far as to get rid of Windows entirely.

So the Vista-equipped Zoostorm has the yellow jersey, at least until I find a site that sells a more impressive pre-built system for my budget. I’ve been looking and I’ve not found one yet, so keep the suggestions coming…