If your budget is $600, there are a lot of 15" laptops you can get for that price. Sadly, it has been too long since I have shopped for a PC and can’t remember if I owned a HP or Compaq.
I will say that if you can, get the laptop with the least add-ons. I once had to re-format and re-install and I noticed it running a lot faster before re-installing drivers and anti-virus and extra apps and what not. Or if you’re daring, just wipe the HD once you open it and do a clean install of Windows an nothing and see if you can live without any extra stuff. Ironically, I think that’s how you’ll get the most bang for your money.
I’d buy HP or Compaq again. But I really don’t care about specs since my needs are simple — MS Office, PDFs, web browsers (with plugin blockers), a comicbook reader, an IM client, Scrivener (http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html), Q10 (http://www.baara.com/q10/) and FocusWriter (http://gottcode.org/focuswriter/) would pretty much cover 98% of my computing needs.
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I will say that if you can, get the laptop with the least add-ons. I once had to re-format and re-install and I noticed it running a lot faster before re-installing drivers and anti-virus and extra apps and what not. Or if you’re daring, just wipe the HD once you open it and do a clean install of Windows an nothing and see if you can live without any extra stuff. Ironically, I think that’s how you’ll get the most bang for your money.
I’d buy HP or Compaq again. But I really don’t care about specs since my needs are simple — MS Office, PDFs, web browsers (with plugin blockers), a comicbook reader, an IM client, Scrivener (http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html), Q10 (http://www.baara.com/q10/) and FocusWriter (http://gottcode.org/focuswriter/) would pretty much cover 98% of my computing needs.