[A_perfect_lady]

God, I love my Mac. If the house were burning, I'd save the cats, then the Mac.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I'm assuming the more expensive one also has a CD burner.

Assume nothing. If it doesn't specify CD-RW, it probably lacks it. Get specifics.

[KoRn]

We have several of those where I work. I staged a few if them, and they seemed pretty solid. For what you are going to be using it for, one of those should do well. However, in laptops I prefer the centrino mobile chipsets, but that could raise the pricetag a bit.

[Incorrigible]

Something you may want to consider before purchasing your laptop computer.  Though Toshiba is back at BBB rating at the moment it was down at "F".Toshiba America Hits "F" Rating With BBB
Tim Thorpe (Blog) - July 7, 2006 6:20 AM

Toshiba America has received an "F" rating by the BBB amid customer complaints

Toshiba America Information Systems, Toshiba America’s computer manufacturing company, has received an "F" rating from the Better Business Bureau. The rating comes amid more than 400 customer complaints filed with the BBB against the company. The complaints stem from alleged defective products, failure to honor warranty claims and other issues. Problems related to overheating of Toshiba laptops and slow repair service seems to plague the company while some computers have to be sent back multiple times to correct the issues because the original service did not fix the problems.

Over the last three years the BBB has received a total of 620 complaints against the company of those 22 led to full refunds from Toshiba, 2 received partial refunds, 172 were resolved when Toshiba finally agreed to honor its warranty.  However in 4 more cases Toshiba refused to assist the customer. What is most shocking however is that 406 of those complaints have still not been addressed by Toshiba.

 

[Petronski]

It's always better to buy the most laptop you can. If you later decided you wanted to upgrade the $650 model to the $900 model, you would pay far more than the $250 price difference at purchase time.

Another example: to upgrade the memory to double the size might be an extra $50 when you buy it, but to take it in and add it later could easily cost $100 or more.

[ThePythonicCow]

I made a couple of posts in response to a similar question, on the thread COMPUTER HELP-Looking to buy a laptop computer..

Here's copies of what I posted. See this thread for more discussion.

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I'd recommend first choosing the retailer, not the laptop. In particular, I recommend DiscountLaptops.com. They have consistently had extremely high ratings from ResellerRatings.com over the years.

The brand that DiscountLaptops sells the most of is Sager, which is little known. They are a major manufacturer of high end gaming laptops under other brand names, such as Alienware.

So I'd go to the DiscountLaptops site and choose based on features and price.

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Dell gets a rating of 4.37 on ResellerRatings.com, on a scale of 10. DiscountLaptops gets a lifetime rating of 9.98. Dell works by driving down their parts and manufacturing costs, and covering for the resulting lower quality with a good replacement warranty. Better to have quality hardware to start with, and still get a good warranty, as Sager Notebook, the primary laptop manufacturer supplying to DiscountLaptops, does.

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Bump on the memory recommendation. Not even 512 Mb is enough. I've got a Toshiba laptop, and its got 768 Mb, and it is barely enough. If I open more than a couple of apps, it gets dog slow, terribly slow. I'd go for 1 Gb for any Windows XP or Mac OS laptop (or desktop for that matter), at a minimum.

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Newegg is the only way to go

Yes - I am a big fan of Newegg.com. Anytime I know what I want, I buy there.

But in cases like this, where I don't know just what I want, a place such as DiscountLaptops.com is better, since it guides one to good choices.

[HAL9000]

The intended use is almost exclusively word processing with some internet. No games.

Get a MacBook - or a MacBook Pro with illuminated keyboard -

[HAL9000]

By the way, Toshiba sold milling machines to the Soviet Union so they could make silent propellers for their submarines. Boycott Toshiba!