Something with fair bit of memory that can run skyrim smoothly on atleast medium settings. But not too expensive.
Thanks for any suggestions.

probably the best bet would be to build your own or if you don't have a tech aptitude, try a local computer store, the brand PCs are a scam from my experiances with them.

Second that.

my local computer store guy said the same thing. he said instead when I get some money, we'll build one. Perhaps he was right.

my 5year old dell plays it on high with just a memmory and video upgrade. Core 2 @ 2.4,2gig of ddr2 ram,240gt @1gig video.win7 ultimate os. Did have 4gig of corsair ram but one of the sticks was causing ctd's. There are a lot of sites out there where you could get a rig for under 400 that will run it no problem.(not including monitor or sometimes os)
Best bet would to figure out the max you could spend and then if your not pc savy just post on these threads for someone to find you a system for that amount.

My comp is nothing special.

Gateway RS780 w/ Phenom X4 9150e @ 1800 MHz
4096 MB (2 x 2048 DDR2-SDRAM )
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT (1G vram)

I'm not maxing out the settings or anything but they are all at above medium settings.

My Laptop was built with gaming in mind but it svcks big time, I can hardly play Skyrim.