<p>i have a toshiba satellite, which was fine and dandy until it stopped turning on. and then i went through the NIGHTMARE of their service center. they have top ratings in customer service, but my personal experiences were horrible. i was without a laptop from January until this past week.</p>
<p>i would give anything to go back and buy a POWERBOOK. Macs are your friend, believe me.</p>
<p>^ pshtt</p>
<p>a little clarification</p>
<p>"top of the line" =</p>
<p>3.2 GHz processor
1.0 G ram
100 G hard drive
DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RAM drive
17'' 'crystal bright' display
128 mb graphics card
'802.11b/g WLAN, Bluetooth®, gigabit LAN, V.92 modem' watever the hell that means :</p>
<p>A laptop with those specs is a desktop replacement. It has little use besides sitting on a desk. For a moveable laptop you need good battery life, and light weight. Unless of course you prefer to have a laptop sit in one place.</p>
<p>that 128mb card is not top of the line...its a few generations/models back and half the ram of anything I would buy today.</p>
<p>Laptop harddrives are also slow as hell...it sucks but if you put a faster one in, they get too hot.</p>
<p>for laptops that is top of the line, basically. I see few with more ram then that for notebooks.</p>
<p>1 gig of ram is plenty. So is a 128 mb graphics card. Let's not get spoiled here. I remember back in the day using an old 386 to play Ninja Turtles on a giant floppy disk. Back in the days of the 486 when a 28.8 modem was top notch. You don't need 2 friggin' gigs of ram to type up a word document.</p>
<p>I currently use a Fujitsu C Series LifeBook laptop for high school use and home use. The laptop costs around $1,499. Some notable features include:</p>
<p>[ul]
[<em>] 15" Crystal View XGA TFT display
[</em>] 802.11b/g wireless
[li] Up to 4.5 hours battery life[/li][/ul]
The most appealing aspect to this laptop is its screen; I have never seen a brighter, clearer screen on any other laptop. When I purchased the laptop at a local computer store, an employee told me that the laptop's screen accounted for nearly one-third of the laptop's price. </p>
<p>I haven't experienced any problems with this laptop for the past year and would highly recommend it to anyone searching for a new laptop.</p>
<p>I think I'm going to purchase a Dell Latitude now. I actually have an Alienware (well my family), its got some crazy specs, but its battery life is a whopping 2 hours and its so big and heavy. Definitely not ideal for college. Can anyone suggest which model # to get?</p>
<p>I customized a decent Dell 6000 laptop for under 1,000. But this is primarily because I would really only use it for schoolwork. Do you really need a fast computer to run internet explorer (or firefox), Word and maybe two other things? No. </p>
<p>I will probably notice a difference, seeing how this is what my desktop has:
2.8 GHZ P4
512 MB DDRRAM
80 GB Hard Drive (only like 10% used)
128 Mb graphics card
DVD/CD</p>
<p>I got my Toshiba laptop about a year and a half ago and these are it's specs:</p>
<p>2.4 GHZ Intel
512 MB DDRAM
40 GB Hard Drive
64 MB Graphics card
DVD/CDRW drive
Wireless G Internet</p>
<p>It weights about 6.5 lbs, has the best speakers I've EVER heard on a laptop, has a beautiful screen.. and after rebates I paid about 800.</p>
<p>Best investment ever.</p>
<p>if you looking for a laptop with good batterylife go with a centrino style laptop. they are optimised for long battery life and wireless proformance. i would recomend aginst anything with a pentim 4 procssor, and the pentim 4m processors are expensive.</p>
<p>MY IT staff tell me the Pentium 4 is much more durable than the centrino. They don't think the centrino will last for 4 years of college.</p>
<p>It will. CELERON processors won't centrinos will. Centrino is the name for the wireless card and processor setup. Together they make centrino. The centrino processor is the P4m or just plan Pentium M .</p>
<p>Go read Dell's customer service comments before you buy. If you don't need service, great; if you do, buyer beware.</p>
<p>I've had great experience with Dell. And acers suck. suck suck suck suck suck. I'm thinking about going mac, after 8 years of windows... can i make the switch? how different is it, and how much better is a mac?</p>
<p>macs >>>> pc's</p>
<p>how about the cheapest laptop that'll get the job done?</p>
<p>You're right, my careless reading.</p>
<p>jeez all of you are looking at such heavy laptops...</p>
<p>not too much and not too little(allows me to make dvds and cd's and has a huge 100gb hard drive,)along with this ill be buying a digital camera, a lock for when i go to libraries and also a carrying case for transportation. good luck on your search</p>