I bought a Toshiba Satellite earlier this year. It was about your price range. It handles Photoshop Elements easily. Haven't had any problems with it so far. Good luck with your search.

Thanks Joce for responding :)
My Husband has the Satellitte C75D-A7370 but I am not confident it will run Gimp nor has the file storage I need. What model is yours?

Oops sorry have had visitors. My Toshiba is a L50-A Satellite. When I bought it I explained that I wanted to run programmes to use in scrapbooking with graphics and also needed storage - I've got 8GB memory and display is great. Maybe this is too late for you now but if not I would seriously think about this model. Google it and have a look at specs. Good luck.

I bought an Asus from Amazon, really cheap it was used but you would never know to look at it or its box.
The only thing that bugs me is windows 8, its a pain in you know what. I have 10 so I have to try to chg it to 10 as soon as I get a chance till then I have been using the old one (a Satelite), and will probable use it til it crashes.

Thanks everyone for your help and input. January sales are coming up around here and I hope to buy soon.

Please don't consider an HP product. I had a brand new laptop completely crash after 31 days and dealing with HP was a nightmare. I let my son talk me into a Mac desktop and am sooooo glad I listened to him. Yes, it was more than I wanted to spend, but the performance is excellent and the only time I thought there was something wrong, I just called the nearest Apple store for an appointment, took it in and found out I hadn't been updating it as often as I should, which when I did the current updates everything was perfect again. :) And with a Mac, no having to buy anti-virus, anti-spyware and such every year because that is all built in. So consider what you would be saving not having to buy that stuff every year :)

now a drawback with a Mac might be the Gimp program. I have never used Gimp so don't know about it, but I use PSE and it works like a dream.