My suggestions:- I live in the UK, but I assume global brands have similar quality in the USA
1) Unless you move about a lot, buy a desktop, you get much higher spec, cheaper and are easily upgraded as your requirements grow. Gaming options are often limited also on a cheap laptop as the graphics cards are generally low spec. The screen is quite small which is important for graphics programs like Blender and video editing programs with lots of menus. Dont rule out second hand or building your own desktop PC, its easier than you think.
2) Dell laptops are very good, also support is really great, just go to the website, put in the machine id number and get all the drivers. In the UK they tend to be really competitively priced. My mate runs his telecom company on them and would't buy anything else as he finds them very reliable.
3) Compaq/HP are not good despite their name. Difficult to set up, My partner has had several and they have all gone wrong. Support is also very poor. Acer doesn't have a great name in the UK and is usually sold in Superstores etc. I haven't owned one though, so couldn't comment really.
4) If you can pay a few bucks extra and have Windows XP installed instead of Vista, take it. I know Dell used to offer this option. My Dell came with Vista and I thought there was something wrong with it it was so slow (Its a good spec dual core inspiron). I put XP on it (using all the drivers from Dell) and it ran, I would estimate at least twice as fast....I couldn't believe it!
5) If your animating, keep an eye on the connection ports they offer. It may be good to go for one that has a firewire port if it is available.
6) Before you buy, just check the graphics card will run blender. Go the the blender forum and ask. Blender can have issues with some cards. For example you get shading problems with some ATI based cards.
Last edited by martinprice2004 (July 16, 2009 (11:47am))
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