Ok, here's the system that I started with, and worked just fine until I got tired of waiting for the system to catch up (and incidentally, made some very nice maps with regardless)
Acer laptop (i think we spent 600 on it new, 3 years ago) 1280x800 screen, 32megs builtin vid memory, 1gig ram, AMD Turion (something midrange) 64 gig hard drive, and an external wired mouse to complement the touchpad.
That had access to a wireless router (linksys, 4 hard ports) (maybe 100 bucks). I was bedridden at the time so i had a laptop desk and cooling fan unit (by Belkin), call it $50 combined (i know you can get simple laptop desks and a chair from walmart for around 100).
Total price.. $750 ish.
I would call that pretty close to bare minimum. It wasn't long before I could sit up again, so I'm now using my desktop machine about half the time.
Desktop: Dell Dimension DIM 3000 p4 3ghz, originally supplied with 512Mb RAM $800
Memory: 2gb ram kingston ram installed aftermarket $150
monitor: Dell E173FP (no short name found) 32 bit capable, 1280x1024 max resolution (included with desktop price)
Keyboard/Mouse: Dell, provided with system, standard/basic as it gets.
graphics card Radeon 9250 (64megs memory, agp4x) $150
Cd/DVD: Sanyo CRD-BPDV2 DVD+RW (aftermarket, i think cost $120 - included drive died)
Internal drives: maxtor 80gb IDE(7200rpm)(aftermarket), western digital 80gb IDE(7200rpm)
External drive: Iomega Prestige 1Tb USB2.0 $150
Nostromo N50 (Belkin) speedpad $50 (originally for games, but it works great for graphics applications too, amusingly enough)
Wacom intuos4 graphics tablet 4x6 - $299
Lexmark x5150 scanner/printer/copier $90
Armoire/Wardrobe desk, Sauder DIY kit $400
Office chair, generic, no brand name found $150
Total budget to put together from scratch including furniture, around $2400
To me it's a pretty decent midrange system, there's only one project I've attempted to work on that slowed me down appreciably. I'd like to expand to 4gig ram, but honestly, 2 gigs is doing fine.
As to high end systems, I'll let the industry pros wow you with what they want. the only thing I could put on that list for sure would be the one Wacom Cintiq monitor tablet.. 22" i think? It weighs in over $5k on it's own
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