OT: Laptop suggestions?

[Captain Kwok]

I recently bought a Dell laptop and have been happy with it so far. They offer a decent amount of customizable options through their website.

[GuyOfDoom]

The consensus I've heard from just about everyone I know with a labtop is to spring the extra money for the better battery option almost every time.

[Fyron]

It still amazes me that they sell 5-cell batteries for 15in+ laptops... for 14in and smaller, it makes sense to have an option that doesn't jut out the back. But for larger ones that have an "internal" bay for the battery...

"Green credentials?" Sweet zombie jesus... Planting a tree for each computer built is a great disservice to the public, and needs to stop. The only way to "offset" a computer is to put an equal amount of the resources used for its construction back in the ground (or use 100% recycled metals), and remove real amounts of gaseous waste from the atmosphere (far more than just CO2), which a tree cannot do. This whole "carbon offset" thing is just a big marketing scam, taking advantage of the huge amount of environmental misinformation propagated these days... There is no way to grow enough trees to even begin to approach "offsetting carbon" from industrial production. When they start building huge microbiotic scrubbers to remove actual pollutants from the air en masse (or even prevent them from going up in the first place), we can talk about "green credentials."

[bearclaw]

Dell Vostro computers are designed specifically for what it sounds like your friend's mom is looking for. Inexpensive for the specs (relatively) and comes with NO trial software!! That's a biggy. We are due for a major replacement of hardware in our office and it's looking more and more like we're going with Dell Vostro's for everything. Hard to beat those prices.