Well the school is paying me to do some work, so I now have $1600 to play with. I could really use a laptop. I went around stores today seeing what all was offered, but really wasnt blown away by anything.

current pc: amd 64 3200+, 1gig ram, 9800 pro. great 2 years ago, starting to show its age now.

My thought is that I can spend around $800 on a laptop, and be close to building a decent desktop withe the rest of the money. Or I can use all $1600 on the laptop and probablly stop using a desktop all together.

I really dont play games anymore, the most taxing thing I use it for is hanlding RAW photos, which can slow my current system to a crawl at times. I really just need something I can take to class and take notes, surf the web, and edit my photos on.

so my questions are...

Is this the time to buy? I am not in a real hurry (though I would like to buy by the end of feb.)

any brands to look for/stay away from?


any ideas on the matter would be great.