Hello, I have to choice out of these companies for a labtop for college, I do not know what brand would be best. I have heard of most of them, however, I don't know how good they are in quality, I have heard that Dell, Gateway, Systemax, hp=compaq, and Sony are good laptops. I know that eMachines has done better over the years, and Toshiba seems to be popular. The top selling ones are: 1. Averatec C3500 AMD Athlon XP-M 2. Acer Aspire AS1681WLCI-XPH Int 3. Acer Aspire 3002LCi Mobile AMD 4. eMachines M6810 AMD Athlon 64- 5. Acer Ferrari 3400LMi AMD Athlo 6. Sony VAIO T240P/L Intel Centri 7. Toshiba Satellite A75-S206 Int 8. Toshiba Satellite A65-S1762 In 9. eMachines M6811 AMD Athlon 64- 10. Acer Aspire AS1804WSMi Intel P According to TigerDirect's website, which is where I normally buy. Acer seems to be selling alot, however, I have no clue to how good the quality is. Any help? The choices for brands are below. Acer Advueu Technology Asus Computer International Averatec Cybertron Dell eMachines Fujitsu Gateway HP / Compaq IBM-BP Lenovo Motion Computing Panasonic Rugged Notebooks Inc. Sony Systemax Toshiba Viewsonic If you have had a good experience, or own, a laptop from one of these companies, and feel that it would be a good machine for a college bound student. It would be appriciated if you would leave your feedback. I have looked at PC World's reviews and they say that HP/Compaq and Dell are good choses. I am looking at spending around $1,000 total for computer upgrades, either to beef up my 180+AMD MX with 768 MB SDRAM, or to get a laptop with, or a cheap laptop and upgrade my desktop. If you have any info or suggestions it would be great, I am looking for the best value for my money. Thanks!

I've owned laptops by Dell, Toshiba, HP. The Dell was the best and the Toshiba was my least reliable/favorite.

If you want to go by popularity, Dell takes the cake on college campuses, however my advice is to consider things like battery life, warranty package, repair loaner availability, weight, wireless/bluetooth features, upgradable modular components and finally price. The above should pointer should pretty much help you separate grain from chaff. Goodluck !!! Do not type anything in this space.

I'd advise making a short list then having a good look at them in a shop and then googling there model numbers. You shouldnt just rely on the brand, most have some poor models. If I had to chose by brand then I'd probably go for an acer, there not the best but generally the best value for money. I've had allot of problems with HP/compaq, they don't seem as good as the old Compaqs. I've had no direct experience with Sonys but my boss had one that wasn't up to much. Only had one each of IBM and Dell and no problems with either.

For what its worth: I've had two e-machines desktops in the last 6 years and zero problems with either. I use mostly for websurfing and scanning slides and photos. I've a Toshiba laptop cheapest I could find at the time, $800 after tax/rebate about Oct '03. 2.4 celeron, 40 HDD and 256 memeory and CDburn/DVDplay drive. I use it for recording from broadcast radio and transfer from audiocassettes to MP3 and websurf ocassionally. Many hundreds of hours and no problems yet.

thank you for your replies. They help a lot. I looked at the battery life of one of the computers i was interested in, and noticed that it said "up to 1.5 hours", that was not what I had hoped. Is it possible to but one like that and then put a better quality battery in it to increase the life? or is the battery usage the same for all? I was looking at a Acer; (Acer Aspire 3002LCi Mobile AMD Sempron 2800+(1.6GHz) / 802.11b-g Wireless / 15-inch XGA / 256MB DDR / 40GB HDD / CD-RW/DVD Combo / Windows XP Home / Notebook PC) $600+ship http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1350606 and a Dell; (Dell Latitude C640 Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz / 14.1-inch XGA / 256MB DDR / 20GB HDD / DVD-ROM / Windows 2000 Pro / Refurbished Notebook PC) $609+ship http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1337356 however the dell did not say its battery life. But they were really the cheapest the I could find that were still over 1.5 Ghz. Would those be worth buying? Any more help would be appriciated. Thanks! George