I second the recommendation to use tigerdirect.com. I’ve done business with them for many years and have been very happy with them.
Don’t buy a Compaq or HP. If you have any customer support issues you’ll end up in phone hell with someone in India. Trust me on this- 14 hours just trying to get them to ship an omitted disk. They outright lied to me multiple times. I finally found a “secret” number for U.S. phone support.
Also avoid Acer unless you want a “throw away” laptop that you’ll replace in 6 months to a year. They’re poorly built. I bought one solely because it was cheap (I was short on cash) and had options obviously geared to a European consumer.
My husband bought a Toshiba we saw on sale at BestBuy. It was very nice and at a great price. I liked it so much when I replaced my crappy Acer I went with a Toshiba from tigerdirect. I’ve been very happy with it. My daughter has a Gateway which also seems to be a very nice machine. She also had a Gateway desktop that was a great machine.
As for Sony, I think they’re over priced and over rated. My other daughter had one that only lasted about a year before dying.
Lenovo I hear is also highly regarded. I tend to look at what are the top sellers on tigerdirct.com (they’re listed) and compare products. If you sign up for their email you can get sale alerts. They’ve been having great 24-72 hour sale alerts.
I can’t say much about Dell. I’ve never considered one since their customer service problems years ago. The horror stories permanently put me off. I wish you the best with your purchase.
Plus HP announced they are getting out of the consumer computer business, so future support is going to be even more suspect.
Well unless they find someone to buy that part of their business. But unlike IBM, they stupidly didn’t line that up BEFORE making their announcement.