Try and demo the guitar rig which offers you the ability to model multiple amps pedals gates, equalizers pedal reverb, chorus and much more. As a guitaris buying a singlke amp for several hundred dollars is too limiting especially for beginners.

personally i bought a Vox vt-15 for $175.00 and the guitar rig with kontrol pedal interface. Even though the vox has some modeling capabilities (its tubed) i use the Kontrol interface to the guitar rig 95% of the time. With its head phone intercae I can practice in private and i use the L-out and R-out and plug into stero sytem so I can pipe 400 Watts out my main speakers.

Bottom line I think is that unless your playing gigs and jamming with friends laying out a large amout of cash may not be all that practical on a combo amp or a pre-amp cabinet solution.

There are also mobile solutions for lap tops...

Check it out....http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/products/guitar/guitar-rig-4-pro/