I'm an incoming freshman.
I purchased a dell Inspiron 6400 with the following specs-
15.4" screen
Intel Core 2 Duo @2GHz, 2mb L2 cache, 667mhz bus speed
2gb ram @ 667mhz
Mobility radeon x1400 graphics card
80gb hard drive at 7200 RPM (I don't use much hdd space - no music, photos, or whatnot)
upgraded wireless card (It works great, picks up a signal from someone's wireless router 3 blocks away)
9 cell lithium ion battery
It cost me roughly $1000, and I'm very happy with it. Quite fast.
Unfortunately, they don't offer the Inspiron line anymore - maybe that's why it was inexpensive. Looking for a bit, I suppose I'd recommend something like the
Vostro 1500 from dell's small business website (Tends to be less expensive than the home site, and I didn't have any trouble ordering from it even though I don't have a small business)
I configured it to be about the same as the notebook I got for $1000, and it ended up being $1200.
Definitely look for yourself, figure out what specs you want, and then try a bunch of websites to see where you can get the best value for your money.
Take a look at
http://www.notebookreview.com/ - they have a giant discussion board, as well as listings of the most popularly bought laptops, etc.. Very useful site.
Oh, one last thing. I recommend (
and MIT does also) that you don't get Vista on your laptop right now. MIT has a sitewide license for XP and Vista, so you can upgrade or downgrade whenever.. but right now, IMO vista hasn't been around long enough to expect to run without driver difficulties, etc.
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