First question is are you wanting to use only Amiga?What do you want from computer?
$300 will buy new PC with Win 7 as smerf says;his options make sense economically even if his posts comes across as anti-Amiga.And the PC will let you run a very nice Amiga Forever emulation.
If you want lots of free programs that will let you do nearly everything then Linux on PC is very good;Linux is still available for older Mac PPC so a Mac G4 would allow you to run Linux,Mac OS and soon? MorphOS .
If you want modern Amiga hardware then SAM IS the official Amiga solution despite the rather high price.
If you want classic Amiga WITH improvements then Mediator etc is your path.