Update is a few posts down.......

I was going to upgrade my home desktop but the laptop would be much more useful to me at my work.

What's the best deal going on a decent notebook these days?

I have seen some fairly decent ones at Best Buy in  the $400 - $450 range made by Acer. Are these generally a POS? My absolute max budget for this machine is $800, I would perfer it to be cheaper.

I'm going to be running XP Professional regardless if it comes with Vista or not.

The laptop will be used for browsing the net, running Microsoft Office 2000, watching DVDs, burning the occasional CD. It will see daily use for extended periods of time, I will need a good stable machine that will not be affected by running for long periods of time (8 or so hours).

Things it must have:

Wireless internet card with a cat5 cable plug
2 gigs of RAM
Many USB ports
Ability to play DVDs
CD burner
Decent battery life

Should I look at Intel or AMD processors? I have an AMD 1700XP in my desktop, been running strong for more than 5 years...

Any suggestions on machines or brands to look at? I have heard HP is making a good notebook right now, any truth in this?

I have had an Acer for over 3 years.  No real complaints, it has withstood a lot of abuse.

OST

Used Alienware m5500 or m5550 is all you would ever need including for 3d gaming check Ebay I bought mine for 700 dollars and it came with 2 gigs and a 256mb Geforce 3d card and a hi res screen, I upgraded the drive to a DL dvd burner for 50bucks and for another 100 I upgraded to 150 gigs from the 80GB hard disk.

Plus it has the cool blue alien eyes that light up when your laptop is on.

Quoted: OST

+1

bump

Quoted: I have had an Acer for over 3 years.  No real complaints, it has withstood a lot of abuse.

My Acer has been flawless.  Good stuff.

Dell Vostro 1400 (or 1500) can be had for $600 delivered

configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=bqdvjad&s=bsd

Here's a coupon for 30% on an HP laptop.

www.slickdeals.net/?permadeal=10850#direct_deal_10850

And here's a link to a website that does laptop reviews (link is for HP review from July 07):

www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3828

Hope this helps you out some.

No complaints on the Acer.  Get one and put 2GB RAM in it and you'll be fine.

Just picked one up for my BIL from Buy.com for $492 shipped, although it doesn't state it it also has integrated bluetooth.  Also got a pair of Compaq refurbs from Tigerdirect for $399 each and they work fine.  They're sold out now.

I have been very happy with my Toshiba Satellite that I have had for the past 6 months.

Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad. Rugged, reliable, excellent factory support, relatively easy to repair yourself, accessories available everywhere, doesn't come loaded with a lot of useless software.

Quoted: Here's a coupon for 30% on an HP laptop. www.slickdeals.net/?permadeal=10850#direct_deal_10850 And here's a link to a website that does laptop reviews (link is for HP review from July 07): www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3828 Hope this helps you out some.

THANK YOU! I think I'll be going with an HP now that I have that coupon, unless Best Buy happens to have an amazing deal tomorrow afternoon.

Quoted: Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad. Rugged, reliable, excellent factory support, relatively easy to repair yourself, accessories available everywhere, doesn't come loaded with a lot of useless software.

Loyal ThinkPad owner here. Can't imagine why anyone would buy anything else.

Impressive (Not Rick Roll either)

Been using ThinkPads for years, solid, rugged, awesome English speaking customer support as well. Don't know if you can get one for in your price range, but I bought an r61i for my fiancee 2 months ago at Circuit City for $1059 and then a $150 mail in rebate, maybe another deal can be had...

ETA: Here ya go, quest solved! shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087¤t-category-id=52A252555D554F338EB4B3178B3B6554

I've been using the new HP I got a few months ago.  Compared to the Crapshiba I had, this thing is a work of art.

i have the "Compaq 6515b" model that came with 512mb ram and an AMD Semperon processor.  I upgraded to 2GB and am very happy with it.  Does everything I need to do (word processing in field, quick wireless setup, seems to be durable).  It also has an ATI video card (A must for me, refuse to use sub standard Intel integrated graphics) and performs wonderfully.

I'm even using Vista on it, imagine that!  

Quoted: Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad. Rugged, reliable, excellent factory support, relatively easy to repair yourself, accessories available everywhere, doesn't come loaded with a lot of useless software.

I was just looking for a laptop in the same price range and ended up getting a slightly used Thinkpad T60 and I love it.  Would do the same thing again for sure.

ThinkPad R61E with XP Pro for $599

Quoted: Quoted: Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad. Rugged, reliable, excellent factory support, relatively easy to repair yourself, accessories available everywhere, doesn't come loaded with a lot of useless software. Loyal ThinkPad owner here. Can't imagine why anyone would buy anything else. Impressive (Not Rick Roll either) Been using ThinkPads for years, solid, rugged, awesome English speaking customer support as well. Don't know if you can get one for in your price range, but I bought an r61i for my fiancee 2 months ago at Circuit City for $1059 and then a $150 mail in rebate, maybe another deal can be had... ETA: Here ya go, quest solved! shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087¤t-category-id=52A252555D554F338EB4B3178B3B6554

With HP's 30% coupon, IBM seems to be about $250-$300 more than HP for a comparable notebook. And that's taking into account IBM's 22% off sale.

I would like an IBM, and I love the mouse pointer, but I just dont think I can justify the extra cost.

Quoted: I would like an IBM, and I love the mouse pointer, but I just dont think I can justify the extra cost.

Fair enough, for what it is worth, my X series gets about 6.5-7 hours of uptime on battery power and is always on in my home or at office. The thing never gets shut down. My new one that I bought a while ago hasn't seen more than 3 hours of being turned off (been on a flight once).

The wireless reception is impeccable, I am able to connect with a moderately decent connection to a neighbor 4 houses away on his unsecured network.

Not to mention, they are equipped with technology to stop the hard drive completely in the event of a sudden change in position such as a drop, to minimize or eliminate data loss.

Throw the fingerprint scanner, 'roll cage', Keyboard LED light for low lighting conditions, great mouse, solid active response keyboard (extremely easy to type fast on) and great ThinkVantage software to keep your machine running perfectly should make it worth the extra cost.

Well I made a purchase at Best Buy this afternoon.

I did quite a bit of research today, in fact I went to Best Buy four times and finally got the laptop at 10:30PM

It's an HP DV6636NR

AMD Turion 64 X2 1.9 ghz processor
2 gigs RAM, expandable to 4gig
15.4 monitor
DVD burner
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7150M
Wireless card
and lots of other stuff

Complete specs can be seen here: HP laptop from Best Buy

Priced at $849.99. For this week only, Best Buy offered 0% financing for 13 months. That deal ended Dec 1.

I wasn't going to buy the notebook because it was too expensive. I went home and researched Best Buy's unreleased sales ad for this week, Dec 2 - 9. I found a copy someone had scanned onto the net. It had this same computer on sale for $200 off, or $649.99, but were no longer offering the 0% financing.

So I went back to Best Buy and purchased the laptop on 0% financing. They have a 14 day price match promise, that if they offer the laptop cheaper in the next two weeks I will receive the sale price.

So I'm going to go back tomorrow and get my $200 off, while keeping my free financing.

I got a real good deal, at least in my opinion. Building a comparable notbook on HP's website, the one I bought still works out cheaper even after using HP's 30% discount code.

BTW Best Buy is also running a real nice Compact notebook for $399 this week.