<p>I'm currently a high school senior and am looking for a laptop to bring to college. I'll be studying computer science at WashU next year and plan to use my laptop pretty intensely. I most likely will bring my laptop around school, to places like the library, etc. I probably won't lug it around everywhere I go. I need a laptop that is strong enough to run multiple programs at once. I currently leave my computer on for very long stretches so that I can download music and movies, so I probably need a durable laptop with a good warranty. I will use it to play music and movies. Study wise, I'll need a laptop which can do basic things and run programming software. I'm seriously considering a Dell because it seems to be ranked highly in customer service and hardware performance. I've looked at several laptop buying guides, but the laptops in those guides are a bit expensive.</p>
<p>Minimum Laptop Specs: Processor: Pentium M or Athlon M (maybe a Celeron M, but I'm not sure how good it is) 1.4+ GHz
Ram: 512mb or more
Optical drive: cd-rw/dvd or dvd-rw (although I don't know if I REALLY need a dvd-rw, and most of the systems I'm looking at cut corners if they have a dvd-rw)
Video card: I'd really like something that isn't integrated, but it's not that important.
Hard Drive: 40 GB or more to store media. Preferably 5600 rpm, it seems anything higher than that is expensive.
Screen: I'm not really sure about this one. A widescreen seems nice, but I'd be just as happy with a 14 or 15 inch screen.
Price: Here's the catch, it has to be around 1000 or less if possible.</p>
<p>Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks.</p>
<p>I've been told avaratec are really cheap for what you get and don't have too many complaints. It's difficult to get a laptop with 512 MB RAM and a non-celron processor for under $1000 from someplace like Dell.</p>
<p>search for one of the many available laptop threads and you will probobly find answers to all of your questions. </p>
<p>BUt really with laptops you get what you pay for and you want some power but you want to pay a meagre price for a decent laptop and its probobly not going to happen.</p>
<p>Yeah I was looking at the dv 1000 and dell 6000. The dv 1000 comes with everything I want, even a dvd-rw, but it has a celeron. I just worry that it is a little underpowered. I'll definitely look up the compaq. Yeah and about price, I could probably bump up the price range half a notch to $1500, but that would be pushing it.</p>
<p>WWW.TIGERDIRECT.COM - trust me this is by far the best bargain site and that 1000$ budget of yours can buy hell lot more than u have asked for....</p>
<p>I noticed that you were willing to compromise on your hard disk rpm speed. Let me tell u that ram FSB , CPU FSB & hard disk RPM speeds are the only important requirements of a fast computer. It is a misconception of the CPU speed being all important. And yeah 1 more thing learn to say no to CELERON....</p>
<p>Dell laptops are not as well put together as their desktops. I have a Toshiba laptop that is awesome. Compaq, IBM, or the other big brands are other good bets.</p>
<p>The Celeron M is the Pentium M with half the cache and no power management. That means that the processing speed will be pretty similar, but the battery life will be shorter.</p>
<p>according to me battery life of a laptop is one of its key features which is quite often overloked. I therefore suggest that you dont go in for a celeron and try to purchase a centrino [ preferably from toshiba]. By the way ... Sony VAIO laptop 1.6GHZ Centrino 512Mb ddr 80 gb HDD Dvd+ Cd-Rw drive combo was available for like 1100 $ [ inclusive of rebates] on the site i mentioned before... U should check it out.</p>
