Buy the best you can afford. I truly believe you get what you pay for. My experience has been that my family has had the best luck with Dell and HP Laptops. No problems, and great service. One thing to do is buy the most memory, RAM that you can afford. ! GIG is highly recommended.  One brand that I would not recommend  is Acer. Why I strayed from the farm, I don't know. Had system board problems, and monitor problems. I am a  computer repair person with an A+ certification, and this one was trouble after 3 months of ownership. This Acer 4220 also had over heating problems too. I know one can get a lemon in anything, but stick with tried and true brands. Dell and HP both have excellent customer, and technical support. Always buy the extended warranty. If you buy Acer products, you will need it. For now stick with either Mac or Windows XP operating systems until Microsoft works out the bugs in the new system, Windows Vista.