<p>Then i went to the actuall Dell site and customized a laptop that was exactly like one of those recommendations, to see how much the MIT discount actually was... and when i did that, it seemed that buying directly from the Dell site would come out cheaper than buying through the mit discount site that's linked. I was wondering if anyone else could test this out and see if i just made a mistake with the customizations... Oh and if anyone has any recommendations for a good laptop pc in the range of $1300-1500 I'd appreciate it.</p>
<p>I haven't crunched the numbers or anything, but when I bought my Dell a year ago, I bought it directly from Dell, which I'm reasonably sure was because it was cheaper. So it wouldn't be surprising if that were the case in this instance...</p>
<p>But you won't get ThinkPads any cheaper than through MIT's govconnection. And you want to buy a ThinkPad. Unless of course you're a communist, Clifford.</p>
<p>The cheapest ThinkPad is probably a little out of your range, and I'd probably get a Dell before an HP (or you could try an ABS machine). Still, the computer is a very important part of life, and if you're going to use it for a while, I'd say just go IBM :) Because Dells are lame</p>