Headed to college. Laptop help?

[EHaskins]

I'ma fan of tablet computers for school. I had've a Gateway CX210X (discontinued), and an HP tx2z (replaced by tm2 series). I strongly recommend looking into them for college use.

When you're looking at consumer grade machines they are all equally pour quality (80+% of laptops are made by the same handful of companies which you've never heard of), and everybody's support is in India now. Find the cheapest one with the features you want, and get it. If you want to get a quality machine Lenovo Thinkpads and HP EliteBooks and ProBooks are good, but you will pay a 30-60% premium over consumer grade machines.

The advantage of business class machines is you will usually get support either in this country, or at least from someone who's first language is english, they are usually easier to upgrade, and extended warenties are usually cheaper than the consumer equivalent (if you are inclined to purchase one, which I don't usually reccomend).

As for places to buy TigerDirect and Newegg both get some good deals if you watch, otherwise buying direct from the manufacturer when they are running sales works good. You can also get an additional 10% off HP Direct and TigerDirect purchases by going to the store through Bing Shopping (http://www.bing.com/shopping/pages/stores.aspx).

Eric