Where I live, Southern California, there are a number of wholesale suppliers offering used, brand name PCs at a steep discount. I buy and resell them to a number of local businesses.
Generally, I will pay $90 for a Dell Pentium 4 2.8 GHz with 1 GB of DDR RAM and a 40 GB hard drive, plus another $50 for a 17'' screen. Keyboards, mice, and cables are included. The machines come with Windows XP (including COA license sticker) and MS Office. The supplier carrys all replacement parts, has a 60 day warranty, and offers very good pricing on repairs after that.
These machines are completely capable of browsing the web, doing email, working in Microsoft Office, printing, scanning, etc without seeming sluggish. Modern desktops with multicore CPUs and gigabytes of RAM have far more computing power than most business users actually need and that excess capacity, and the money spent on it, are essentially wasted.
I have found that Pentium 4 systems are the sweet spot because they have the speed to keep up and are available for an incredible price. Additionally because the systems are brand name (Dell, HP, IBM) I can download the drivers, specs, and manuals from the manufacturer's website and replacement parts are easy to find. I would recommend that you find a similar local supplier. For that same $1000 you would be able to equip 6 desktop users.
