<p>Lorddragon, you’re in Europe, right? If I were you, I’d look for a good Acer with a good AMD 64 processor, The newer AMD processors don’t seem to be available in affordable laptops here yet, so I would take advantage of being where you are and check them out. AMD’s are great processors, and you pay much less for them than for Intel. Acer support in the US has a good reputation, so you might want to see if your warranty is good here, or purchase that here. I have an Acer 1522, with an AMD 64 3000+ processor and I love it, but it’s a big desktop replacement and probably not what you want for school. We just ordered the Acer 3204 with an Intel processor for my daughter to take to NU, but would have gotten an AMD if were available in the same configuration. Unfortunately, they’re not widely available here yet.</p>
<p>We also looked at Systemax - they have some nice solid compact systems. I’m not very familiar with their support, but they’ve been around for a while, and I’ve heard good things. If you’re seriously looking at Dells, you might as well look at the Averatecs as well. This clearly is an opinion, so I don’t want to spark a battle, but I think the general quality of Dell laptops these days is at about the same level as Averatec, so why pay Dell prices? Averatec sells cheaper systems with lots of features. Their quality isn’t the best, but they’re not pretending it is, and they charge fairly. We also looked at Sager, but they are a bit pricier. </p>
<p>I’d probably avoid the HP’s as their quality has slid since their merger with Compaq. I’m not sure what to say about Toshiba. I’ve heard different things. I bought one quite a few years ago. It has changed hands but is still going. The bad news is that it has had the motherboard, hard drive, and keyboard all replaced. The good news is that the parts were cheap on eBay, because they make so many of them. </p>
<p>Buying a computer is a very personal decision, and it’s silly to say one choice is right and the other wrong. Dell makes it easy, because you’re buying straight from the manufacturer, but I think you pay for that convenience.</p>