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...

Here are the specs for the XPS ($1,088) SYSTEM COLOR Tuxedo Black PROCESSOR Intel® Core 2 Duo T5450 (2MB cache/1.66GHz/667Mhz FSB) OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition LCD AND CAMERA Glossy, widescreen 15.4 inch LCD (1280x800) & 2.0 MP Camera MEMORY 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz (2 Dimms) HARD DRIVE Size: 120GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE Slot Load DVD+/-RW (DVD/CD read/write) VIDEO CARD 128MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GS WIRELESS CARDS Dell Wireless 1490 802.11a/g Mini Card BATTERY OPTIONS 56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery SOUND OPTIONS High Definition Audio 2.0 FINGERPRINT SCANNER Finger Print Reader XPS M1530 ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE Trend Micro Internet Security 36-months PRODUCTIVITY SOFTWARE No Microsoft Office ADOBE Adobe Photoshop + Premiere Elements WARRANTY AND SERVICE 1Yr In-Home Service, Parts Labor,24x7 Phone Support DATASAFE ONLINE BACKUP Included 10GB DataSafe Online Backup for 1Year DIAL-UP INTERNET ACCESS No ISP requested Dell Printer Driver Windows Vista Premium Software - Adobe Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 8.1 Processor Branding Intel Core 2 Duo Processor This is the Latitude ($1.157): PROCESSOR Intel® Core 2 Duo T7250 (2.00GHz) 2M L2 Cache, 800MHz Dual Core OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Business, with media LCD PANEL 15.4 inch Wide Screen WXGA LCD Panel MEMORY 2.0GB, DDR2-667 SDRAM, 2 DIMMS HARD DRIVE 120GB Hard Drive, 9.5MM, 5400RPM OPTICAL DRIVE 8X DVD+/-RW w/Roxio and Cyberlink Power DVD VIDEO CARD 128MB NVIDIA® Quadro NVS 135M WI-FI WIRELESS CARD Dell Wireless 1395 802.11g Mini Card FINGERPRINT READER OPTION Standard Touchpad BACKUP OS DRIVERS AND SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION Resource DVD - Contains Diagnostics and Drivers for Vista BATTERY 6 Cell Primary Battery PRIMARY POWER OPTIONS 90W A/C Adapter FLOPPY DRIVE No Floppy Drive SECURITY Norton Internet Security 2008 36 Month Subscription WARRANTY & SERVICE 3 Year Limited Warranty and 3 Year Mail-in Service Ship Group US - System Documentation, Power Cord OS Labels Vista Premium Label Internal Keyboard Internal English Keyboard

My toshiba battery stays in full time even while on ac power which it is almost 24/7... only use battery power maybe an hour, three times per week. Battery, even though installed, does not receive any charge until it dips below 95%. Battery is located in a cooler area of the laptop so I don't think its getting any appreciable heat. Actually nothing gets appreciable heat excpt my right judo chopper ... that edge of the laptop is the only place I can feel any heat and only occasionally, so probably somthing is working hard when I feel it. Probably about every other month the laptop will run on the battery to discharge it down to around 10% charge level to exercise it, which I think the manual tells you to do - and then it only takes slightly more than 2 hrs to fully charge it. fwiw.. I used to get the daily local newspaper delivered,, I forget, not cheap. But maybe just throwing it out was the main Pia. I still read the same newspaper online, and dont have to worry about throwing the trees the pages are made of away. Nor paying for them. Plus I read lots of other news online. Research my neighors hypocrondiacisim and meds, as well as most everything I buy. I'm supposed to be on a sodium controlled diet, hospital gal told me to try to keep sodium intake around 2000mg per day - if I cheat, she said, with a sub or pizza I can always make up for it by eating nothing but ice cream the next day or two because its no to very low sodium ... How much sodium is in a domino's supreme pizza... wow, thats online - I eat a lot of ice cream. What's on tv,,, go to NASCAR.com, sPEEDTV.com, or yahoo tv guide. Wonder if walgreens has bowls, I keep breaking bowls.. hey thats online... 2 for $1.50 (they used to be 50¢ ea.) I hate shopping store to store, much easier to look online first. That's how I bought my laptop, my tv, search at Staples, OfficeDepot, BestBuy, CircuitCity,, and search online to see if any significant price at an etailer difference. If you can edit video on your desktop, you really dont need anything fancy in a laptop to surf the net or read pdf' files, or do light graphics. I have an old desktop with a decent video card and can edit or do anything on that computer. While its really nice to have a fast everything in a lsptop,,, I really dont need fast video/fast processing on my laptop,, I'm cheap, but that still is a waste of money to me... those type of programs that really need fast video processing or lots of processor power I can still run on any laptop remotely from the desktop,, and it may be a little sluggish - If it is I need to feel fast I can always take over and run the complete desktop remotely with the laptop. Not a big deal here, except I have to go power on the desktop, cause I'm cheap and dont want to leave it running full time and pay its power bill of 130watts x 24hrs when its doing nothing but sitting idle on standby.

actually Big Lots is the one selling the stock from Circuit City which is closing out most of their stores so these are indeed new in the box brand new items just like you would find at the CC stores. I have bought many items computer related there for excellent prices and have been extremely happy with them, The cordless mouse I am currently using, the 3 usb hubs I have connected to my pcs, a memory card reader, some speakers, the kingston flash drives and several of the SD memory cards just to name a few so I personally must say I do and would buy there, with no negatives. My husband loves to go there to see what kind of great buys he can find on tools. when they are the ones handling the liquidation of brand name stores you really can get some great buys then. Recently they had a huge liquidation of Pier One Import items. I regularly shop there which is why I have signed up with their online buzz club to get the advance info for the sales. I have never had to return anything I purchased there. I know that it does depend on which area of the country and which stores but the ones here are all excellent and I would not hesitate to purchase there. IF they do have reconditioned items for sale it says it clearly on the package and also on the sale flyers, they did have some Dyson vacuums a while back which were all labeled as reconditioned. When they did the Eckerds liquidation I stocked up on my diabetes items like the lancets, alcohol pads, and got a great new electronic blood pressure monitor for dirt cheap, same one I had looked at in Eckerds in fact. But that is just my personal shopping experiences. If I did have the spare money I would love the HP lappy unfortunately I just got a new vehicle so I am broke LOL. there will be some awesome sales heading into the Black Friday time period.