Buying a new laptop

[Adam Shapiro]

Personally, if you're looking to go the PC route, I would recommend staying as far away from HP as you can. I know of many horror stories involving their customer relations and technical support.

A number of people I know with Dell machines have issues with excessive heat. One friend even has to go so far as to keep his on a fan-cooled stand almost all of the time so it doesn't overheat. Dell does have some very nice deals pricewise though.

If you're looking for something very portable I would recommend looking at the Lenovo ThinkPads. They have excellent battery life, and you can easily fit on an extended battery with only a moderate change to the laptop's footprint. My current laptop (a Lenovo T60) gets about 5-5.5 hours of life with the extended battery, which is great for days when I have back-to-back meetings. The only thing that I don't like as much (but can understand from a battery performance perspective) is that they do not have high-performance video cards. They are primarily designed for business application, not for gaming. Still, they are excellent machines.