<p>dell might be the most famous but it is far from the best... you can find nice notebooks at around a 1000 dollars from smaller gaming sites, that have a small consumerbase... <a href="http://buyxtremegear.com%5B/url%5D">http://buyxtremegear.com</a></p>
<p>I would go for a Toshiba or an IBM (if you can afford them). Dell makes crap.
Here's a nice Toshiba for a decent price at Best Buy. Toshiba laptops are very durable and sturdy. I love mine.</p>
<p>I'd say if your going portable, go with a centrino processor. Lighter, and longer battery life. On the other hand if you want to game with it, or use demanding programs go with intel pentium cpus. BTW, don't bother untill a few weeks before college, cause as you know computers are always becoming outdated.</p>
<p>Here's the one I have. <a href="http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp/store/configurator.aspx?mid=121%5B/url%5D">http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp/store/configurator.aspx?mid=121</a>
It cost under $1000. <em>Good processor a centrino 1.6ghz</em>, 40gig hd, 256 ram(through I'd reccomend you upgrade to 512), CD-rw, Dvd-rom, no OS, so you could just get a copy of linux and put that on there, which seems to be what you want. Or you could just get a copy of a windows corp. cd which everyone seems to have these days, or just get a copy really cheap from your college. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>do NOT go with Pentium 4, they are crap and they can cook egg.</p>
<p>i shall say, do not think too much about speed. (rewording: although you shall take a look at price-vs-speed, but do not just get a speedy one)</p>
<p>i mean what you describe does not seem to need any thing too special. especially you dont game (good!!). and you want linux and 3rd OSes. if you get too hot stuffs you might find hard to get help on geeky stuffs.</p>
<p>my theory, if you wanna buy electronics (esp. computer), get the cheapest or get the most expensive. i'm usually with the cheapest.</p>
<p>you'll get a great notebook with <1200. just flipping some of computer magazine and what not.</p>
<p>"Dell makes crap."</p>
<p>How so? I have owned a Dell laptop for 2 years and have been quite happy with it.</p>
<p>they don't make notebooks that will wow'em type for their money, sure they are good, but they aren't spectacular, i think crap is an overstatement</p>
<p>HP has some REALLY good laptop money can buy, mainly their AMD64 + Geforce440 + 1540 high def screen + DVD burner laptop that costs only 1200</p>
<p>Basically it's a big laptop, using 12 cell liOH battery to give you 3 to 4 hours of battery life but it's about as heavy as a light machine gun (that's 15 to 20 pounds) </p>
<p>if you feel like lifting weights, get it, though the laptop pack may come out to be 30 - 40 pounds.</p>
<p>I have a laptop carry bag that lower class man can barely hold on to cuz they are too heavy, hehe. that's why you work out.</p>
<p>about five of my friends here have dell laptops, and of the 5 four of them have already had to replace their hard drives, two have replaced fans, and one had to replace the motherboard. that means that of the 5, 2 were good, and 2 were bad, and 1 was awful. one of my friends actually was in the process of filing a lawsuit against dell (he had a lawyer and everything), and dell finally buckled in fixed his laptop for him.all of those problems happened between year 1 and year 2 of owning the laptop.. so if you get one, i'd strongly recommend a 3 year warranty.. because in my mind, they are crap. I'd rather have higher than a 40 percent chance of getting a decent laptop.</p>
<p>i have an acer laptop, and i am a pretty abusive user.</p>
<p>it has been 5 or 6 years, all the plastic shell was broken, hard drive went back (natuarlly)</p>
<p>BUT ALL ELECTRONICS STILL STAND!</p>
<p>i</p>
<p>do NOT get any laptop with an intel extreme graphics 1/2. </p>
<p>you will be stuck playing the crappiest games ever (unless, youre not gonna play any decent games at all). </p>
<p>centrinos are definitely a plus. mine is about 2.5 pounds; its light as a feather compared to other laptops; and good battery life.</p>
<p>actually i found out if you oc the processor on the intel chipsets, the graphics card is oc'd as well... with that said, if you're going to make sure it has 64 mb of memory if it's integrated</p>
<p>Run sisoft Sandra 2005 and check performance of different notebook hard drives. It is important to look not only at RPM's but also at cache size and manufacturer. But hell I can nowhere find information about it!
[nowhere - ECAT + GovConnection + Manufacturers' sites.]</p>