Hey everybody. I'm looking for a laptop for college, and checking out various places online/in the city to buy one. Do you know of any good websites or stores, and do you have any advice?

craigslist.

Uhhh don't buy one from craigslist. :p

If you can be patient, watch http://www.slickdeals.net/ site. It has lots of good deals.

I'm of the opinion that this would be a good deal, for $680:

InspironTM 6400
Windows Vista
Intel® Core™ DUO T2350 (1.86GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB)
2GB Memory, 256MB NVIDIA graphics card, CD/DVD Burner, 80gig HD,

Damn. I might want to buy that..

Trust me on this one, buy a Thinkpad with 4 years of warranty.

You could certainly buy more powerful laptop for less, but let me share with you a little anecdote:

A friend of mine has a dell. One day, the harddrive died. It took him three weeks to get the Hard drive replaced. He had to pay for shipping.

I have a Thinkpad, one day the headphone jack died. It took me three days to get the motherboard replaced. I did not have to pay for shipping.


Still not convinced? How about another little story:

My Roommate has a Thinkpad, one day he accidentally knocked it off the top bunk and it fell 8 feet onto the concrete floor. There is now a crack in the plastic, but it's been running fine ever since.

ThinkPad’s aren’t invincible, but they are better build that almost every other laptop you can buy (except maybe toughbooks), plus Lenovo takes their warranty very seriously. Do you really want to be worrying about a broken laptop middle of your junior year? I thought not.

Hey West Wind, you buy a lot of Lenovo stock or som'n

If you're looking for a mid range dependable hiptop, go for HP

No, but I keep trying to convince them to offer me some kind of kickback program. If I could just get $10 for every friend I've convinced into buying a Thinkpad...

Thinkpads are particularly sturdy if that's what you're looking for, but you can achieve similar longevity with cheaper brands by buying product service plans (from the manufacturer - not bestbuy/futureshop) if none of the Thinkpads catch your eye.

For great deals watch out for those crazy Dell coupon promotions, tigerdirect has decent prices year-round.

Thinkpads ARE strong, for sure. But the last thinkpad I owned had HORRIBLE hinges that literally fell apart.

On that note, my HP runs great and has held up for two years now without issue.