I have heard the thinkpads are good.

You will hear contradictions. I researched the same thing using Google. It's crazy. Some love certain brands while others hate them. It doesn't matter the brand. Some people love their Acers, and some say their crap. Same thing with HP, and so on...

I myself have a 2 1/2 year old Dell Inspiron 1526 that had an oem stick of ram go bad but besides that, I'm pretty happy with it. It still holds a charge for about an hour and a half and doesn't get hot on hard surfaces.

I just got this Gateway NV59 on a killer sale at Bestbuy that included an I5 accidentally instead of the labeled I3 for $499. Sweet deal! I had an old P3 Gateway desktop that lasted for like 8 years before I caved and bought a dual core desktop - LOL. So I've had good luck with Gateway. Hopefully it will continue.

What I have read is that all laptops are made by one or two companies and branded by retailers. Buying midrange or highend laptops will get you better quality parts inside, not just faster - but I don't know.

Go to the store and play around with them and choose what youy like because I think it all comes down to luck of the lemon draw or not.

I have heard this about laptops being made by just a couple companies. I have also heard that most laptops that range around the same price are just about the same type of machine, just by different companies. I am leaning right now towards the Sony or Toshiba, but the reviews are so drastically mixed its hard to wade through it all.

Its like looking at a bag full of grapes and trying to pick out which one isnt sour.

Just saw this note:

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-N … ps-831284/