Hi there, as the title says I'm looking into purchasing some hardware to start mining some altcoins

I'm looking for the best hardware and method to use/purchase for this pursuit

My budget is around $1500 and less (hardware only, does not incl. electricity costs, etc.)

I'm basically looking to buy hardware that has the capability to mine a variety of altcoins

(ie. start mining a newly introduced coin until the difficulty level surpasses my hardware - and from then on I can tweak the same hardware system to start mining a different coin)

Is this a possibility even? Is solo mining dead for all coins these days? Would it be best for me to buy a pre-setup GPU and join a mining pool?

Considering I know very (very) little about computers, is this too quixotic of a pursuit? Or something that just takes a little time, study, effort and patience and will be worth it once the mining rig is set up?

Please advise! It's greatly appreciated

Please help I'm a newbie, clearly.

Yesterday I bought a bunch of Fastcoins and sent them from my online wallet into my offline wallet (while it was still syncing) as I just downloaded the client from the website..  It was taking so long to sync so I reloaded it a few times and now the wallet just freezes whenever I try to open it and windows says that it "isn't responding"

Is this just a lag on the server on the block end? Or is there sometime wrong with my program?
If I uninstall and reinstall the wallet will I keep the same address as I did when I initially installed it( and sent my coins to? )
How can I fix this problem?!?

Please help!
Thank you very much