Budget Friendly Laptop?

Whatever you do, don’t buy an Acer.
The price might tempt you, but it is a piece of junk and not worth anything.

Acer are ok laptops and nothing to major wrong with them . Try a Compaq CQ70–211
But without knowing your budget its hard to say

Dell, for the service & support you’ll get w/it.

This depends on what you want the laptop to do and how much you are willing to spend. If you just want something to browse the web and check email, you can get a netbook for around $300.

Often, you get what you pay for.

Sandy
I disagree with you about Acer laptops. I will never buy another after what I went through with them. They don’t care one bit about the customer or standing behind their product.
I bought an acer and it never worked right. Sent it back to the company twice and they coundn’t get it to work either. Instead of offering me another laptop or my money back I was told that I should have spent my money more wisely in the first place. This was after I paid them twice to fix it and they couldn’t even fix their own computer!!
Don’t ever buy an Acer unless you have money to burn!!

Agreed about Acer – they don’t seem to have their attention in the North American market but are very popular in Asia, perhaps their service/product offerings are better there.

I’d recommend look at some of Toshiba, Gateway, or Dell’s offerings in the budget space. The trick is to make a list of your ‘essentials’ that need to be built into the computer (i.e. larger screen, lightweight, webcam, etc.) and then go find the models that match your essentials with the brands you like. Once you have a shortlist you can slowly pare it down from there, that way you’re not getting lost in each manufacturer’s ridiculously confusing product lineups.

Another approach is to look at reputable retailers’ refurbished offerings. Refurb products typically come with the warranty, condition of a new laptop so they can be a good deal.

Don’t worry too much about things like RAM/memory or hard disk/drive space as those are typically very easily upgraded inexpensively in the future. (Thought make sure you get at least 1GB of RAM memory).

Acer service is terrible in Australia. There website doesn’t even have service centers listed. They make it almost impossible to contact them. The only option is to go through where you purchased it and if it is over 30 days, they don’t want to know about it!

You get what you pay for is the truth.

Netbooks are great for the price, no bells or whistles (translate – internal cd/dvd drives, few usb ports, etc.) but for learning your way around the internet or specific programs, they are fine.

My brothers Acer laptop went into melt down after he dropped it, Acer took it back Replaced everything inside that was broke and sent it back he has never had a problem again . And i have never had a problem with customer support or with the sytem itself ,

My HP’s fine. I’ve had it for 2 years now; a dv6000.

In the past 10 years, I used nothing but HP laptops. No problem here.