$250 Computer Sound

Recently the crappy speakers my computer came with bought the farm, and now I'm in the market for new ones. I know computer speakers (especially cheap ones) are notoriously crappy, but as a teenager with little income I'm just not willing to spend more than about $250 for a complete audio solution.
I've read up on this stuff for a few days and it seems like there are a few tears of PC-audio. Bottom of the barrel are the <$80 computer speakers. Then there are a few speaker systems in the $90-$180 range that cater to people who want "good" audio from a computer but still don't really approach mid-fi quality. Then, apparently one could get decent audio from a computer by using external amplifiers with mid or hi-fi monitors and eschewing the crappy "multimedia" speakers usually passed off on computer users. Is it possible that I could put together a decent system like that for under two or three hundred dollars?

I think the answer is going to be no, so my next question is which of the $90-$180 2.1 computer speakers is the best? I know they all suck relative to the stuff talked about here, but please humor me. The Altec Lansing 621's can be had for around $100. Is the %70 price increase upgrading to Klipsch Promedia 2.1's (at $170) going to yield a comperable performance increase? These two systems look like my top choices. Anybody have suggestions? Thanks.