"best" student laptop [company]?

[aReda]

Out of pure speculation and without price concerns, which laptop brand generally and laptop itself specifically would be the best to go with for a college student that has no gaming desire?

Which laptop brand would be the best to go with? I'm leaning towards Sony, their laptop's look great, specifically the Z1 series. Are Sony's laptop's any good? Can anyone tell me anything about them? I'm really going to be interested in them once Intel's Centrino based Pentium M "Dothan" comes out later this year using 90mn technology, and I won't buy 'till then. What really struck me about Sony's Z1 series is that they were rated as having up to a 12 hour battery life, which is awe-inspiring indeed.

Just post your thoughts please.
Red.

[PresterJohn]

i wouldn't buy a sony...they may look nice (snazzy), but their post-sale support on their computer products is the pits.

if you aren't going to game on it (ie you don't need a souped-up video option), then there are quite a lot of good brands to choose from. figure out what you want to spend and then comparison shop.

If you're not going to game, just get whatever is cheap and looks cool.

Seriously, there just isn't much difference between laptops these days. They all come with the same hardware. HP is making nice looking laptops right now, in my opinion, and the one or two that I've used were pretty nice. I'm not familiar with the Sony stuff, unfortunately.

The most important thing to me is having a decent sized screen. Past that, if it turns on and let's me type stuff, who cares what brand it is?

[HeadBand]

Toshibas are very nice and relitavley cheap but if all you are going to be doing is schoolwork then i would save a couple hundred and go with on of the dells that they have for like $599 or whatever

[cysus]

If I were in the market for a laptop I'd get the asus L5000GM/GA, it uses The Intel 865PE chipset, supports high end cpus, dual channel ram, hyperthreading, very nice display, wireless lan (b/g), as well as either a ATI 9600mobility or a nvidia fx GO 5650. All around it's the nicest I've seen, at the right price (about $2,000 cofigured with the best stuff, definately beats ALIENWARE).
http://usa.asus.com/products/noteboo...m_overview.htm
can be configured here
nvidia
http://proportable.g2.cc/detail.aspx?ID=11
ati
http://proportable.g2.cc/detail.aspx?ID=12
Proportable seems like a nice company (and apparently is a registered retailer of asus products, as their site suggests them). I've been thinking about getting stuff from there for a while but I didn't ever really need them, so I haven't. I've talked to the people who run it quite a few times in the past they seem very polite and helpful. (It's no newegg though)
Also look at the ASUS centrino lappy, the S5ne
http://usa.asus.com/products/noteboo...n_overview.htm
http://proportable.g2.cc/
http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20040225/index.html
Sorry if these laptops are out of your student price range.

[Bob The Great]

those sonys are nice looking.

For a student though I'd go with Dell. Built one for my cousin (well configured it ) online for her trip to France. 5 months later still doing great though shes on a vacation from her teaching in France and is touring England now. She'll be back in about 2 months and from what shes said shes really loving the laptop. I enjoyed it too while it was here.

Very responsive, no really cheap pieces, sturdy construction good battery life, which is one of the differences between a cheap laptop and a good laptop.

My grandma got my grandpa a Compaq a few christmas's ago and even new there was one problem after another. The LAN stopped working, the cd-rom was iffy at best after about a year of very periodic use. It gets VERY hot, and its touchpad goes funky everyonce and a while. I see a lot of that from the cheaper laptops. Just components arent quality. The CPU may be a really good CPU but how did they design the heatsink for it? Who made the touchpad? Its those little things that really can kill a laptop experience.

I'd deffinatly suggest a dell though, they are great little student pcs and you can get pretty good discounts as a student also. If not dell, Toshibas are nice too.

[PoonDoggy]

Sony has some of the lightest laptops which would be good for students and people who travel. You tend to spend more on Sony than other MFGs. They also tend to be proprietary in the memory...using a micro sodimm...same with Dell. I like Toshiba due to reliability and customer service.

[NicRuf]

www.powernotebooks.com is a great site for laptops. they have a variety of systems that meet whatever specs you need. price is good too. customer support is awsome.

[aReda]

Thanks for the reply guy's it helped a ton!

[Tekk]

I've also heard GREAT things about www.powernotebooks.com

I would definitely consider them as my place of business when I get a laptop