Oh you guys are just warped! You should sell all you possessions and move into a yurt on the plains. Think of how much longer the earth will last for Mr. Gore because you won't be causing global warming with all of your destructive behavior. It all depends on your perspective, mine may be different than yours and I'm not as PC tactful as some around here, but what you do not hear me saying is that you are any less of a person or your view is 2nd rate because you are not as smart / rich / or / beautiful as me because you didn't apply yourself in school / business / community to be able to afford trinkets that are not available to everyone. Nor did any of the built in, superautomat, warped, yuppie scum folks call out any of the plebes for being pedestrian for liking their Mr. Coffee. This is America - the place that has the OPPORTUNITY for a middle class guy to become the World's wealthiest person or a minority become The President. Apply yourself and you can pretty much have whatever you want.

That is the one thing I have noticed since scouring the net and asking everyone and anyone in the know their opinions on who makes the most well put together laptop. It seems that many folks are extreemely loyal to one particular product or brandname, but one brandname doesn't seem to be conclusive over the other. The Imac sure has its very loyal following, as well as Dell and Toshiba and, another brand rapidly picking up steem is HP, especially their DV6000 and DV9000 lines. I am beginning to conclude that at this point, figure out exactly how much of a laptop you need and can afford, paying particular attention to Size of Hard Drive, How much Memory (RAM), and third, how much graphics card, and lastly and most important, the CPU. I have concluded that the duel core processor is important, as it is essentially two processors stapped together, and the OS uses one for certain functions and the other for certain functions, and most importantly, only one is being used and powered when both are not needed, saving battery power and overall electric consumption. Another rule of thumb, to save money, get the base core duo (1.60GHz, I believe), and skip the upgrade on the CPU and get 2G's of RAM, as your CPU runs out of cache space for storage, it will draw from Ram, and adding RAM is much cheaper than adding a high end CPU. Bottom line, I'm waiting for some hot sales. Another thing to think about is size, and yeah, folks, size does matter... Most of the 17" models that I've tried out in the stores just seem too damn big and heavy, especially if your going to use the thing as a LAP top... it's just too damn big for my lap, and I have a big lap at that... the 12" is just too small, especialy for viewing movies, etc. That's the one thing that turned me off from the DELL XPS 1200... hot looking little machine... just too small. 14-15" seems just right for my taste. It seems to me that all these machines (Toshiba, Dell, HP and many others) are all beginning to become clones of one another. Seems they are are made in China nowadays, and no one has yet to convince me overwhelmingly that one is better than the other...

on track here with grandms, I would not go with any emachine especially not a refurbished one. Nor would I go with Vista. For the money you can get brand new bundle machine with windows 7 home premium 64 bit. Look at walmart.com, look at sams and costco. Best buy has some very decent prices too I would not use their repair dept. from the sounds of the offers I think I would steer away from that place, you can do much better. look at some of these AMD Phenom II 521 Dual-Core processor If you have a monitor you want to us you can get one with out a monitor also or just buy the monitor separately they are getting pretty cheap. AMD Athlon II X2 AMD Athlon II 220 AMD Dual-Core E-350 processor this is an ACER quad core for under $400! AMD Athlon II X4 Quad-Core 645 processor this ACER actually has windows 7 Professional installed and is under $300 Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5800 processor so you see those prices they are quoting for old outdated Vista refurbs is just not good at all. I have purchased several pc's from walmart they have a great return policy and you can take them to the local store for return.

One of the best digital camera sites around is dpreview.com. You can spend forever reading their reviews and forums. The canons are indeed highly regarded, but there are also many nikon and sony fans as well. Personally I'm a canon guy, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that they're hands-down the best in all areas. There are digital cameras available in all price and quality ranges. It really depends on what you want to spend. I love the elphs like lowspark has, but you do pay extra for the small form factor. Canon has a range that's cheaper but larger, with similar quality in terms of lens and imaging. You should generally plan on buying a separate memory card as the ones that come with the camera are pretty lame. Figure on getting a 512MB or 1GB card. The higher the resolution of the camera the better, in general, however there are some technical issues as resolution gets above 5 megapixel. So a camera with 7 megapixel isn't necessarily always better than a 5 megapixel camera. I'd generally look for a camera with 5 megapixel or higher, and a 3x or better lens in the range of 35-135 or thereabouts. Image stabilization is very nice to have; canon has optical IS, which is generally considered better than electronic IS. Also important is speed in several areas. How long does the camera take to turn on? How quickly does it take the image once you push the shutter button? How quickly can you take multiple photos in sequence? How quickly does it focus? Those are things you can get a feel for by playing with the cameras in a local store. In general, you can't go wrong with canon, sony, or nikon.