I can find plenty of "build a pc" threads, and have gotten some great advice from you guys in the past in such threads, but not too much on laptops. Situation is that my g/f needs a new computer for grad school, where she has a TA job, and it seems like laptop would be a good fit.
Is there anything in particular to know or look for? I had a 15" Titanium Mac a few years ago that was great, and I know they can run xp and all that stuff now, but it seems like Dell's laptops are up there in terms of build and features now too. We were probably going to go the Dell route. Budget's around $1000. She just wants to plug it into an external monitor/mouse/keyboard at home, so we thinking more 15.4" screen instead of those big desktop replacement kind.
1. Is there anyone I should consider outside of Dell and Apple?
2. Are service plans on laptops worth it? Both Dell and Apple have pretty skimpy 1-year deals by default.
3. Is Vista worth using yet, or should we just stick with XPhome SP2 for now?
4. What sort of graphics card would be recommended on a laptop? I haven't really been in the market since I bought a 6600 GT for my desktop. They seem to be generally integrated on laptops, but I'm not sure if that's just the way it is with the space constraints.
Right now I'm looking through CNET reviews and stuff, and a lot of laptops have fingerprint security and bluetooth and I don't think we need any of that, just a sturdy, light machine that won't need to be upgraded for some time.
