Dell had a q6600 machine for $619 a while back with 2 gigs and a 160 gig HD. I think it was on techbargains. With the extra money you can get yourself a pretty decent video card.
Sorry for digging up an old thread, but just wanted keep yall updated of my laptop purchase yesterday I went with the HP since it was on sell for $999 and did not pay taxes at all due to my brothers tax id?? http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8404229&type=product&id=1180743304715
Congrats on the deal Just my $.02, but in my experiences (with desktops), Dell is horrible. 2 dells crapped out and their India tech support was not helpful (though friendly). Bought an HP a few years ago and have had no problems (have a thinkpad laptop). Also had a Dell laptop for work for a few years and it gave me tons of problems
I bought an HP Desktop 4 years ago. Still going strong. Had a virus problem with it, and need to use a paperclip to open the CD-ROM drive, but other than that, works great for what I use it for (MS Office, Surfing the Net, Burning CDs). Seems like Dell's quality has dropped off in the last few years.
I have a HP 6436- that has been great, but reading this thread makes me nervous about it. I've had it for 2 months, at least I paid extra for the full replacement service agreement.
HP. Dollar for Dollar its the best buy. Now if you were planning on spending over $2500 then you might as well flip a coin. I got an HP, and the only real problem I have is the battery. I had to get it replaced twice. The inverter went out(which happens to any laptop) and I must've killed my memory RAM stick(laid laptop on couch causing severe heat). I work with Dell's all the time at work and at least 3 out of 10 are completely f**ked up fresh out the box.
Has anyone tried to buy some laptops out of DELL and HP, actually there are a lot of other brands, like ASUS, ACER, etc, and I think they are pretty good
