I'm in Australia and built a Core i7 system from scratch for about $1500 I think and that was 12-18 months ago. You should easily be able to build a kick ass system for $1800 now.
I got an Intel DX58SO motherboard, Core i7 2.66Ghz, 6GB Corsair DDR3 RAM, 1TB HDD plus 146GB 10k RPM HDD, 520W Corsair Power Supply and ASUS 9800GTX+ graphics card. Total was well under your $1800 budget, but those parts are probably well out of date now.
Two tips I will give you from my recent experience quoting products for customers
1) If you are going to get a monitor get the Samsung 2494HS. It's 23.6" 1920x1080 widescreen with DVI, HDMI, built in speakers and 3 year warranty for only AUD$259 Inc GST on shopbot. Much better than the 24" for $450 which is the same resolution and only 0.4" bigger.
2) Buy a retail copy of Office 2007 Small Business Edition Retail (not OEM) from Harris Technology (or whoever else has it for $238 Inc GST or less). Microsoft aren't releasing a Small Business Edition for 2010, but if you buy SBE now the free upgrade goes to Office Professional 2010. That's an $800 product for almost 1/4 of the price. Not only that but as it is a full retail copy instead of OEM, it's not tied to the hardware you purchased it with, it's completely transferable.
Never argue with idiots
They bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience
