Need a new laptop! Help!

[Michael Donahue]

I want to invest in a laptop to bring to school and my head is spinning looking at all of the options! I want something with decent battery life that doesn't cost a fortune (hopefully around $800 or less). Can you give me some recommendations?

Also, most laptops in that price range have integrated graphics. Will that work OK for Sketchup?

[Jim Kountz]

Integrated graphics has come a long way and yes mine works fine for Sketchup, video editing etc.
In not sure whats the best deal out there but Im pretty happy with my Dell. They are always sending me sales too. I think they had many in your price range. I got a Duo Core machine with 2GB ram, DVD burner, 150GB hard drive and some other goodies for under $600 last year. Its never given me a minutes trouble and I use it hard everyday for business and pleasure.

[James Jaragosky]

Integrated graphics has come a long way and yes mine works fine for Sketchup, video editing etc.
In not sure whats the best deal out there but Im pretty happy with my Dell. They are always sending me sales too. I think they had many in your price range. I got a Duo Core machine with 2GB ram, DVD burner, 150GB hard drive and some other goodies for under $600 last year. Its never given me a minutes trouble and I use it hard everyday for business and pleasure.

TigerdirectDOTcom for the best deals around. and if you sign up for their e-news letter you can find even better deals. (change DOT to a .)

[Jim Kountz]

TigerdirectDOTcom for the best deals around. and if you sign up for their e-news letter you can find even better deals. (change DOT to a .)

They do have some great deals but be careful of their customer service. My sister went through a nightmare with them a couple years ago over a PC she bought from them. It was just a lemon and had some problems and she practically had to beat them to honor the warranty. Could be an isolated thing but wanted to mention it anyway.

[Mat Ashton]

All I can recommend is stay away from acer. There warranty isn't worth the paper it's printed on. It's not even printed on paper and it's still worth less.

I've had ongoing problems with my acer that are quite common when you start looking on other laptop review sites and acer simply categorize everything as wear and tear and say that's not covered. But when it's pointed out that if something breaks as a result of average use it's suppose to be covered. Then they say oh did we say wear and tear... we actually meant to say it broke cause you abused it...

acer make a very cheap laptop and they know that they're prone to fail often! so they're doing what they can to get out of paying to fix them by frustrating the customers every attempt to get what they are entitled to.

I've ordered a mac to take its place.

[Tim Morton]

I'm happy to report that my daughter...who is the only PC user out of the entire family, and the only one who has had problems over the past 4 years with her computer, is in the market for new laptop. She came to me last night and asked me what macbook she should buy

My little girl is growing up

[Bob Moyer]

I recently purchased a very nice laptop from staples for $659; 17"; another great place to look is the Dell Outlet store

[Chuck Stewart]

My buddy just brought over his new laptop, a Dell Studio with 320G HD and 4G memory. Think it was a 2.0ghz processor but anyway it was the brushed aluminum case that seemed to hide fingerprints well plus it had a button on the outside for searching available wirelesss connections unlike my HP that you search internally thru software. I liked the fact it's cd/dvd player just pulled the disks in unlike my HP that ejects a flimsy looking tray that your afraid is going to break every time you load a disk.His wife bought it for him on QVC and added all the extended warranties for around $1100. Now the good part. I'm cruising wallmart electronics and what do I see? His exact same machine for $800 Think I told him about it?

[Rob Cooper]

I have been happiest with my dell notebooksn mainly because of the more ridgid case and keyboards. If you have a costco membership they include a 2nd year warranty on all computers and have v competitive prices.If software allows go for the apple.

[Randal Stevenson]

Just like with other tools, peoples needs vary. A laptop is NOT my primary computer, nor do I intend it to be. I wanted portability, long battery life, the ability to play one (now old) game (my only Windows software) and to know it works with Linux. I had looked for sometime when the December Paypal/MS deal came up. I broke down and bought the one I was leaning towards.

I picked up the Asus N10J-A2. It is technically a laptop, but more of a larger netbook. It does all the above for me, as well as my network diagnostics and with the standard battery, I get about 4 1/2 hours. I recently received the extended battery, that can now be bought off of Ebay for half the price, and when I boot, it says I have 7 hours and 21 minutes left (although when not power using, that can be longer). It has both built in graphics (Intel 950) as well as Nvidia 9300, that you switch between before turning on. My brother laughed at my choice, but he does more gaming on his, and wants a larger screen (mine is 10.x"), but I can plug it in an external moniter, and use a full size keyboard, so for me, the smaller works better.
This suites my needs just fine, but like I said, it isn't my primary, nor meant to be, computer. The Atom processor that runs it, is supposed to be comparable to a three year old Intel mobile processor. With the discount I received via paypal/MS, and the other full price battery, I have around $800 in it. Without the discount, it can be found for $775, and the extended battery off of Ebay for around $70.