First something to consider. The bigger the screen the heavier the unit. Laptop tech has come a long way but this is one of those places that is still lacking.
I had a Dell laptop for most of college and it worked quite well, until it got too out dated to play the games I wanted. I passed it on to my dad for his use and he used it for another 3 or so years, in fact it still works today (needs a new screen though). When working for Cornell we never had any problems with Dell's tech support either, they started with the basics and worked their way up the chain of things to try, and were all fairly knowledgeable. However I've not had to deal with them since graduation. I have however had 3 Dell laptops for work and had literally no problems with any of them, even though they lived in the dusty, damp, harsh construction world most of the time, and bounced around in my vehicle most of the rest.
My little brother bought a 16" HP last year and has had trouble with it and HP's warranty people from month 2 or so.
Since my Dell my dad has had 2 laptops, the first was a cheap Acer that for the price was a nicely loaded machine. It did come with a lot of extra software that annoyed my dad, and he complained regularly about it. I never had any problems with it though, aside from a not so great battery life. His new one is an Asus desktop replacement, he has had some issues with it locking up but tech support seems to be working well with him on it.
Right now I would be inclined to look for an Intel based laptop, as their new i3 and i5 processors give a nice balance between performance and power consumption/heat generation. I would suggest a minimum of a dual core solution as well, the world is moving more and more toward parallelism and having only one processing unit will begin to hamper you significantly here in the next few years.
Totally forgot about Beth's laptop. Its a 17" Dell that she got for her May 2005. The DVD drive died about 3 years in, and it is now slowly dying away. No major problems other than that, a nice long life for a laptop, very heavy though.
I had a Dell laptop for most of college and it worked quite well, until it got too out dated to play the games I wanted. I passed it on to my dad for his use and he used it for another 3 or so years, in fact it still works today (needs a new screen though). When working for Cornell we never had any problems with Dell's tech support either, they started with the basics and worked their way up the chain of things to try, and were all fairly knowledgeable. However I've not had to deal with them since graduation. I have however had 3 Dell laptops for work and had literally no problems with any of them, even though they lived in the dusty, damp, harsh construction world most of the time, and bounced around in my vehicle most of the rest.
My little brother bought a 16" HP last year and has had trouble with it and HP's warranty people from month 2 or so.
Since my Dell my dad has had 2 laptops, the first was a cheap Acer that for the price was a nicely loaded machine. It did come with a lot of extra software that annoyed my dad, and he complained regularly about it. I never had any problems with it though, aside from a not so great battery life. His new one is an Asus desktop replacement, he has had some issues with it locking up but tech support seems to be working well with him on it.
Right now I would be inclined to look for an Intel based laptop, as their new i3 and i5 processors give a nice balance between performance and power consumption/heat generation. I would suggest a minimum of a dual core solution as well, the world is moving more and more toward parallelism and having only one processing unit will begin to hamper you significantly here in the next few years.
Hope this has been of some help.
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