Disclaimer: Minty doesn't know when to shut up when it comes to computers
What's your budget JSD? Is portability a big factor in your choice? There are a lot of decent offerings between $400 and $600 for people on a budget. I would would stick with pentium dual cores on the lower end and core 2 duos on the higher end within that price range as far as processors are concerned. Starting at around $600 are the Core i3 laptops. More power, newer and more efficient hardware under the hood. At around $750-800 you get into the core i5 laptops which will give you ample power for the foreseeable future. Whatever you get make sure it has a minimum of 4 gigs of ram and 64 bit windows 7 home premium. And stick with Intel processors. Also, almost every laptop out there these days pretty much comes with a webcam and mic standard with the exception of the cheapest models.
As far as brands, it's a little harder to judge hardware quality because all of the computers on the market basically use components from the same three or four manufacturers in China. But Dell has a pretty good rep regarding
customer support. And here's some
data on reliability. It might help if you are the kind of person who struggles with whether or not purchase an extended warranty. Personally I have had good experiences with dell products. I have a 4 year old Dell business laptop that works great.
Lastly, I find that one of the retailers with with the best prices is actually Best Buy. They get away with very thin margins on the mid to low end because they dupe people into buying all sorts of bullshit optimizations, upgrades and junk like that. Avoid that and you have some really great deals even with shipping factored in. And even when compared to buying directly from manufacturers like Dell. Also Newegg.com Is quite good as far as price. I am a regular there
With all that said, the truth is that minty is an apple guy
