On my searches for a new computer (desktop) i heard that Acer are quite a good brand for laptops.

If you are looking for a decent desktop i would get a HP. Though with any computer you would have to fork out a good bit to get a decent one - mine was like £650 which turns out is around $938.85.

The problem i had when i was searching for a new computer is how biased everyone is. You really need to look for yourself on these things which is what i found.

Like theres the main brands: HP, Dell, Packard Bell and Acer. If you google looking for reviews of any of those you will see people who hate them or love them.

Then if you pick a computer and look at it's components you will always see arguments especially with graphics cards. If you buy any computer prebuilt now you will likely a low end graphics card. If you look for opinions about graphics cards you will always see people saying X card is shit get this one when in reality the card could be decent and people are always telling you to get the highest brand. Any if you are a technophobe like myself you won't want to be building a computer or having to install RAM or installing a graphics card/processor despite how easy people say it is.

Now that i have finished that i will give you my recommendations anyway but like i said it's very opinionated and you have to choose a computer based on what you want to use it for and how much you want to pay for it.

In my experience:

If you want to game it's always better to get a desktop (and i presume you do since i saw that you are looking forward to starcraft 2 - it's not that demanding). Laptops are generally not customisable and cannot handle demanding games - this is only if you don't mind playing games on non-high settings, i myself don't mind it.

Computers i have seen problems with are Dells. I've known people to have dells and for them to burn out pretty quickly, my mate had to return 3 of them because they kept messing up. Their customer service i've heard is meant to be pretty bad.

My last computer was a Packard Bell generally it was alright i didn't really have many problems with it and the customer service was decent.

I'm using a HP now and i've had it for nearly a week and there's been no problems at all. - apart from Windows 7 compatibility but that's a different story altogether.

I've also heard that AMD processors are slower than Intel ones.

So basically you need to know what you want, and how much your going to spend. Your best bet is to take lots of opinions into consideration and look up the specs of the computers you want and analyzing if they will be useful for you.

I'm not a computer expert but if you have any questions feel free to ask me and i will see if i can assist.

EDIT: Also what Knyte said: it generally is better to get a computer built to your specs as you can be miles ahead in terms of what is being sold prebuilt in the stores. Though the amounts can add up significantly. I wouldn't build one myself cause i would fuck it up.