<p>I have 1.5k to spend but I'd prefer if it was a little cheaper so I could have some money left on some other stuff, perhaps 1.2k?</p>
<p>What would you recommend for this budget? I'll either be getting it end of this summer or early next summer. Will the prices drop significantly if I decide to choose the latter?
The laptop would be used more for multi-tasking and such and not for hardcore gaming. I will be playing games like CS:S, BF2142, CoD2, etc. though but I don't think any of those are very CPU intensive. I use Photoshop/Flash quite often.</p>
<p>Should I go with a custom built laptop from one of the online stores or go with a mainstream brand like Sony, HP, Dell, etc.</p>
<p>What kind of screen is most popular these days? The usual 15.4"?</p>
<p>Should I go for Vista or XP? No Macbooks please - don't want to learn a new OS. </p>
<p>I don't particularly like Vista, but most if not all new laptops have it instead of XP, I would recommend a laptop with 1GB+ RAM (The more the better, 2GB is good if you can get it), and 80GB Hard Drive should be sufficient if you need more memory you can get an external hard drive. </p>
<p>Dell, HP, Toshiba, Lenovo, Sony are all good brands, you should be able to get a good laptop for less than a thousand dollars though.</p>
<p>Well, I don't personally have a laptop, but I've borrowed TONS and TONS over the past few weeks so I know which ones are good...</p>
<p>Vista, though not worth the expense if you have XP, is excellent, really easy to navigate and extremely pretty. It makes a lot more sense than XP. As well, why get the old XP? You'll eventually need to get Vista...besides, you can always save your stuff as XP.</p>
<p>HP's Entertainment Pavilion is really nice...I'm personally going to get that one for college probably January 2009 (prices really drop after christmas)...the laptop is really good looking, full keyboard...ahhh I want that laptop!</p>
<p>dude $150 is peanuts compared to 4000$ laptops. I mean it gets basic stuff done, you could get a good PC with the remaining money and I think you can upgrade the RAM. Hope this isn't a scam though.</p>
<p>Hm quite a few people have mentioned Thinkpads already so I'm assuming it's pretty good.</p>
<p>Is the macbook really that good? How's the learning curve compared to Windows? I've never owned a mac in my life & have only done some very basic stuff with the school's macs.</p>
<p>If you want to play those games you mentioned I wouldn't go for a Mac. If you wanted to learn though, it wouldn't be too hard. Macs are designed for everyday users anyway who just want to have fun with their computers. Also, definitely buy it later on. Prices always drop, and if you can, wait until after Christmas during your first year. I'm sort of cheap, but I think it's worth it.</p>
<p>Some specs you might want for the things you said you'd be doing:
1 GB of RAM or more
80 GB HD or more, depending on how much info you have
Decent g card for games/photoshop
I can't really suggest a CPU since I don't know much about laptop CPU's, they're really different from desktops.</p>
<p>Don't be afraid to get a really good laptop, because usually, whatever you get is what you're going to stick with. Laptops aren't very upgradeable.
Good luck!</p>