I agree,.. my top 2 choices were HP and Toshiba. I have an older (As in 440BX based board with 900mhz Celeron and upgraded to 1gb ram from the original 128mb) Toshiba and its still trucking along and does everything I need it to do. I use my BlackBerry and tether it for net access. I would like to get a newer model laptop with wifi,.. but that will have to wait.

Hurst

 

IBM thinkpads

 

Word - Lenovo (used to be IBM) is quality goods...

But lets be clear, this notion that brand x is really any better than brand y is purely anecdotal. Take 100 laptops, any brand, and x percent of them will have issues somewhere along the line - feeling lucky? The numbers are generally always in your favor, a wise choice comes from preparing for the worst...

IMO there are two ways to buy a laptop - Get the mac daddy big dog of which you will probably never fully utilize even one quarter of it's full potential (= you wasted your money impressing the jonez's), or buy a cheapy, enjoying the fact you're up about $700 on where you didn't need to be in the first place. If you gotta buy the mac daddy, then make sure you buy a warranty - without it you're rolling the dice. Personally I'd rather have a somewhat disposable ~$400 laptop, than go all in without a warranty - if the $400 laptop breaks out of warranty, go buy another one which will probably come with another year's worth of warranty anyway...

The thing about laptops is they're expensive to repair. Unlike a desktop, where most any part inside won't run you past ~$100 to replace, laptops are design specific. This means a motherboard for your broke ass toshiba, can't be fixed without that EXACT same part. Typically nothing inside a laptop is interchangeable between brands, and even models within brands - there's no standard laptop motherboard, or LCD, or power inverter, or keyboard, etc etc. And since these parts probably can't be sourced from anywhere other than the specific mfg, you're going to spend an arm and a leg on your Visa card if it breaks - (recent repair for a client was $556 for a motherboard, + the $85 for me, I couldn't talk him out of it)

One more way to get into a laptop is second hand, maybe a couple years old. There again it's all about being prepared for "what if it breaks?" A $250 laptop off Craigs List, which appears to work properly when you check it out, doesn't look abused, and you can feel some measure of trust out of the person you're buying it from, and the battery still holds a charge, might indeed be a fine purchase. At $250 even if the thing blows and you end up taking it to a shop spending $$$ on parts (which by now might be available through 3rd party or ebay) and labor, you're probably still under what you would've spent going the Best Buy route.

Final word is don't get caught up in specs. In most cases you will never NEED half of what any laptop since like 2003 will have to offer. Get one that looks nice, or has the burner you want etc because seriously, what will you do most with your laptop? Check email? Internet? Facebook? Write a letter? Watch a movie? That stuff all needs peanuts for specs and with any reasonably late model machine, you won't notice a dual core 2.8 ghz 4 gig 500 gig 17 inch momma jomma doing it any better than that $249 netbook anyhow...

I yield my time...

 

I played Everquest II on my old Toshiba.


No, seriously, I did.

 

If you get a Toshiba, make sure not to get anything Brand New Top of the Line. Happened to me when I got my AV101. That was a quite some years ago, and just like cars, the first batch are the most problematic ones.

Stick with proven technology, don't let the sales guy steer you way left by saying, "oh we just got these in today". You prob won't anyway since I see your GF's uses will be very straightforward and minimal.