Laptops

[The Village Idiot]

Alrighty folks, I have been thinking of this for quite a while now and I have finially come to the conclusion that I could use a little advise.

First off, I do get some discounts through my work from Dell, Sony, and Lenovo. Said discounts varry from month to month usually, but they are some pretty nice ones regardless.

Outside of that I am not looking for something super high end, just something I can run music and movies though well(could care less about the built in speakers they usually suck on laptops). 14.1" or 15.4" monitor preferrably 1440 x 900 or better would be great so long as its at least 1280 x 800. A decent battery life, or something with the new 9 or 12 cell lithium-ion batteries. And enough processomg power, ram, OS(64 bit if I end up with 3 or more gigs of ram), and graphics card to get me through a game such as Dawn of War.

So with that in mind I open to floor to suggestions, based on computer performance, price, reliablity, customer service should anything happen, ect.

Thanks Guys.

[Destructionator XV]

I love Thinkpads, and my experience with Lenovo's customer service has been very good. I don't have any specific models to suggest though.

[Something Awesome]

On the Lenovo topic, I have a 2 year old 3000 C100 that still works wonderfully, though it's probably technically below what you want. I recently bought my sister a Thinkpad R61i, which is basically their cheapest Thinkpad, but is still an impressive machine. However, it has an integrated graphics card, though they have models with big name cards (ATI and NVIDIA ones), but I don't know nearly enough about those things to know if they're good enough. The new ones all have Core 2 Duo processors. As for the battery, I think they have mostly 4 and 6 cell ones. You can also customize a lot of that kind of stuff if you buy one from their site.

Lenovos are generally priced well, are dependable machines, and like Adam said have great customer service. I don't use mine for gaming much though (aside from the occasional game of Defcon or Command & Conquer Red Alert 1). I also have little experience with Dells or Sonys.

[The Village Idiot]

Well two votes for Lenovo is a good start. And no warning about anyone is a good sign. I will start looking but if anyone has anything more please let me know. I probably wont be picking one up till around the holidays this year.