Re: Best Laptop For FIRST?
 

I have a 1.6 GHz Centrino, 512 RAM, 60 HD, integrated graphics card, 15" screen. It works fantastically for Inventor and ProEngineer purposes (I have the student versions ^^) and I'm absolutely certain it's a great laptop for FIRST purposes, as it gets 3.5-6 hours battery life, depending on what you're doing...just in case you have to do some last minute coding on a bus ride or whatever. It's a Toshisba and came to around $1500. Also, if you prefer using the Linux compiler, this Toshiba had no problems whatsoever repartitioning and throwing a Debian partition on there...unlike my friend's similarly priced Dell laptop, this one had no hardware compatibility issues with Linux. Oh...eMachines don't like Linux either...I know a guy whose motherboard wouldn't even support modprobe.

But yeah, Toshiba is great. My model, for it's specs and price, is not very heavy 5.9 lbs and is just over an inch thick.

I'd recommend it.

Re: Best Laptop For FIRST?
 

Dell or Mac, if you can afford it.
As far as I know, macs have ghetto -> usb devices so that you can hook up retro things such as serial ports to a mac.