Avoid Dell like the plague. While some of their systems may be fine. Their service completely sucks.
If you ever have to send it in for service (and you most likely will with a laptop, they run rather hot and that damages circuits)
then get used to talking to Habebe for 30 minutes when all you really needed was for them to send out a box.
NEVER waste your time explaining the problem to the person on the phone. Just say it's broken and you need a box. Just get huffy with the guy so you get handed off to his manager, then he will finally do what should have been done from the start and send out a box to return it.
The technician that ultimately looks at it will pretty much ignore the notes from Habebe and just diagnose it himself.
I have been shopping for a laptop for several months now.
I would have to say the best values on the market are Toshiba and Acer.
As far as the increased cost of a laptop versus a stationary system. There isn't as large of a gap as their used to be.
For $700-1000 you can get a laptop that will satisfy all your needs.
Above that and you are paying for either fancy gaming capabilities, lighter weight or a larger screen.
A 14" widescreen LCD is just fine for a laptop. I used to think I wanted a 17" on a laptop.. but in all honesty you will probably find that a larger screen isn't worth the additional expense..besides you can always plug in a larger monitor for when you are at home or the office.
Definetly get 512MB or more memory. 1GB is a good start.
If you run XP home or pro it will be nice and stable. The primary difference is if you will ever need to log into a domain server. (some colleges will require that ability, if so get Pro. Pro also adds the ability to set up remote access to the system.
Add a laptop cooler to extend the life of the system. They are pads with fans in them (they often run off a usb port) that the system sits on. Your legs will thank you, and it will prolong the life of the laptop.
Buy a good case when you get it too. You will want to protect your investment.
Unless you want to do highend graphics work, CAD/3d design, or play the latest and greatest games. Anything 1Ghz or faster will be fine.
Most new laptops come with 802.11 wireless built in. If it doesn't.. keep looking.
As stated before it is free in many hotspots.
If your savvy you can learn to use something like
Netstumbler and have access pretty much anywhere in the US. (Keep in mind there are some ethical questions that arise when going that route)
FWIW I've been doing computer consulting work for 10+years.
Based on that my experience has been that 95% of all crashes, lockups, and general computer issues are user error. Or more importantly a lack of user knowledge.
If you surf the internet like a drunken frat boy on Bourbon st. then your going to end up with viral issues and lots of spyware and spam.
The best train of thought is to question everything. NEVER click links from emails. (for example if you get an email saying such and such account is going to be closed if you don't resond. Type in the url to the site in question directly rather than clicking the link. Paypal phishing uses that method alot. For example if you have a myspace account and you get a msg saying you have a new msg from someone ....for God's sake don't click the link. Go to the root url of myspace and login as you would normally do. Then check your msgs. Most of the time you won't have a new msg from that person in the email. No matter how much the email looks like an official myspace email.
Remember graphics are easy to copy and paste.
Finally I wouldn't spend much more than 1K on a laptop since you will get about 3 years max use out of it.. Then you will probably want to upgrade to a newer one. Spend as little as you can to get the specs you want.
Good luck
