Lenovo, Toshiba, ASUS are the better brands, Dell is next in line. HP is lower down the list.

Be sure you get at least 3GB of ram. Unless you want touch-screen apps try to find a laptop with the older Windows 7.

Almost any laptop these days should have plenty of hard drive space.

You should be able to find a good no-frills machine in the $400-500 range.

This is an outfit with several stores in Austin. They only do refurbished Dell stuff, surplus from company upgrades and such, I figure. I got a Dell desktop tower, and a Dell laptop, both for under $400. A plus for me was that they were both still loaded with Windows XP, no new learning curve.:) Excellent customer service, and top notch 'puter geeks. Worth a browse...

http://www.discountelectronics.com/home

JLF

the old 'puter had bit the dust and needed something new. So I dropped over to Toshiba Direct and shopped around. Compared their prices with what was available from the diverse big name stores and ended up buying from them. Got a few more frills for the same money as compared to what the stores offered.

If you don't like the specs you can also custom configure many of their machines. With the Christmas rush over the delay shouldn't be too long on such a build. You can play with variables such as screen size/hard drive/memory/DVD's/etc to your heart's content.

Most laptops and their components are produced in just a couple different factories over in China so brand names don't mean as much as they used to. HOWEVER, some brands DO seem to float to the top in the quality area. Over the years we've had great service from our Toshibas, not so much from HP. Dells usually cost more for less as does Sony VAIO - meaning you'll get less processor, less RAM, less hard drive from a comparable machine than other brands will give you for the same $$$.

I've found that spending a bit more up front and buying good quality is better than buying cheap. That being said, my wife's uncle has been running the same Toshiba 17" laptop he picked up for around $400.00 back in '06 with no problems. The HP's that were purchased at the same time are mostly roadkill now.

Another possibility is to check Best Buy for closeout models in their local store. That's how we picked up my wife's Toshiba last year. Bought it from a Best Buy in Oregon so no sales tax. It was a $1,200 machine, picked it up for half price.

Something to think about is the SSD technology. Buy a machine with an i7 processor, 8 gigs of RAM and an SSD hard drive and you'll have a blazing fast machine that should last you at least as long as the last one you had - probably longer. The SSD (Solid State Drive) technology makes for a tougher, faster laptop. You can pick up an external hard drive for storage needs above that which the laptop provides. Another option is one of the models that has two hard drives, an SSD for the operating system and a regular drive for storage of pics, music, etc.

Bit the bullet and bought a Mac. No runs, no drips, no issues. I soooooo do not miss dealing with Windows...