This is for my neighbor. She wants to buy OEM laptop but isn't sure which is better in terms of reliability & durability. I believe it's toshiba. Am i mistaken? Is it HP, or Sony or Dell? Reason is she's attracted to an ad that have Toshiba for $1049 at Best Buy. Spec: Intel Core 2 Dup T5300 Vista Home Premium 2GB DDR2 RAM 200GB HD Dual layer burner Wifi link 802.11g/m Integrated webcam & microphone. I told her I will have some definitive answer this evening. TIA for your opinion. i_XpUser

HERE is the one at BB that she has her eyes on but won't buy it until I get back to her. i_XpUser

Forget it - I should have known better the first time - the processor is only 1.73GHz, speed bus 533MHz - not fast enough for neighbor to be "wowed" by Vista. Thanks anyway :-) i_XpUser

Dell had an almost identical system for close to $400 less a little over a week ago. That price would been a slickdeal .....even with the specs.

Yeah I can see that. The 80GB 5400rpm SATA sucks. i_XpUser

Hi XPuser - good to see you back. Just so you know, Dell are allowing you to 'customise' new laptops with WindowsXP. This would save the Vista headache. just look in their 'small business' section. Cleverly Dell have decided to offer XP to business users as Vista is not upto scratch for software support yet. http://www.dell.com/content/product... They also allow you to upgrade the processor/ram and HDD as required. I came across this when hunting for a new (UK) laptop - my work requires me to have XP due to software being used. Hope this is of some help. D.