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[Joseph]

Well, for my birthday/school next year, my parents have decided to buy me a laptop.  They, feeling they might not be the best at choosing such things, have given me a budget of $1500 (Canadian), plus taxes and such, to make do with.  I'm not as knowledgable as I would like to be about computers, so if any of you folks had any suggestions for the route I should take with this, that would be wonderful.  Thank you very much.

[Catfish_Man]

I would start by listing your priorities and nonpriorities. Stuff like battery life, screen size, what programs you intend to run, etc... that'll help people get a better feel for what would suit you.

[Grawsith]

Also, you may want to find one with Vista, as it saves you from upgrading later.

(I'm typing on a MacBook. I"M SORRY STEVE!!!)

[lb969]

Vista runs like teh suck on less than 2GB ram.

Go for an XP laptop if you can.

[Liz]

Really? My laptop has 1GB ramn and Vista runs perfectly. Much better than the XP on my old computer, in fact.

[JJMitchell]

Probably would depend on what version of Vista it has.
There are only like 9 or 10.

[mberan42]

Check it

[Joseph]

mberan, I looked at your thread, but the issue is that your budget is a fair bit over mine, and as such, not all the suggestions are really applicable.

Anyhow, I'm looking for something with a fairly good battery life, enough that I'd be able to use it in class when need be and not have to worry about it dying on me in the middle of note taking.  A larger screen is nice, but hardly a neccesity, I am more worried about something that will run reliably and well.  Hard drive space is not a big need, as I'll be investing in an external hard drive as well, more than likely.  As far as running programs on it, the main uses will be surfing the internet, word processing, and music.  I don't plan on using it much for gaming, and if I did it would be for older games, not just released new ones.

[mberan42]

Cool.

From what people've told me on two forums, HP make a quality product. Sony is extremely overpriced. Gateway is decent, but not great. Toshiba is excellent, but not very customizable (from what I've seen).

Just go to all the websites and punch in what you want. That helped me out the most.

[ThePQ4]

My university uses HP, but I owned a Dell before, which was pretty fab (for a first computer that all I did was surf the web, and use for writing --oh, and play music). Most websites have a sort of 'build your own' option where you pick a base model and build up from there. --Also, I would suggest going to Best Buy or somewhere like that. They know what they're talking about, ususally.

[Jenno]

As far as quality laptops go... I would like to add a vote for Asus laptops.

[Lunchbox]

I have not heard bad things about Acer laptops. They are on the cheaper end of things but I have had mine for a year now and it is great for internetting and games that don't need a kajillion RAM. The in-built speakers are actually better than the speakers I have for my desktop.
My problem is that due to the nice big screen size it is a large laptop. Meaning it is heavier. After lugging it around for six hours in a shoulder bag I am aching for an iBook.

Anyway, your best bet I think would be going to a shop that sells them and asking what you need. Try a place that specialises in technology or officey things, they are likely to know more than the people at other kinds of places.

[est]

As far as quality laptops go... I would like to add a vote for Asus laptops.

Yeah, I agree.  I am pretty sure that when I buy a laptop it's gonna be an Asus.  Asus make at least some of the Mac Books, so you know that they are capable of producing a quality product.  They also make about a bazillion configurations of their models, and have mostly decent video cards in them.  They are my motherboard manufacturer of choice, so I trust the mainboard in them, which for laptops is pretty important.  On top of all this they don't seem to be all that expensive.

[Liz]

From what people've told me on two forums, HP make a quality product. Sony is extremely overpriced. Gateway is decent, but not great. Toshiba is excellent, but not very customizable (from what I've seen).

Six or seven of my friends have HPs, and none of them have had problems so far. The laptop I just bought is also and HP and I really like it. My brother and sister both have Gateway laptops and they are both satisfied. The people I know that have Toshibas say they're satisfied but not overly impressed. And my friend with a MacBook is completely in love with it.

So... and HP or a MacBook, depending on what OS you prefer. Or how much you want to spend.