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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Olgar Shiverstone" data-source="post: 1233693" data-attributes="member: 5868">I just bought a laptop (my MS completion present to myself <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />) and went with a Dell Inspiron 8600, and I'm quite pleased with it -- I've had a number of Dell desktops that have all performed well, and a number of friends who had good success with Dell laptops, so it seemed like a good brand.  As I did my searching, I found that for the features I wanted (Pent M, 512 RAM, 40+Gig HD, 64+Meg video, CDRW/DVD in a modular bay) the Dell prices were extremely competitive vs other new brands (Toshiba, HP, Acer IBM).  It is a bit heavy -- I was originally going to get the 600 model which is much lighter, and whose base price is cheaper, but I found that once I added the cost of the upgrades I wanted, the 8600 priced out cheaper. (The 1100 series are nice, too, but I needed a parallel and serial port for my wife to use with her sewing machine interface, and those were only available on the 600/8600).  One nice thing that kind of balances out the weight is that with the large screen, I can view two full PDF pages side-by-side, which is great for reading gaming PDFs.  Plus having mobile capability is cool -- added a wireless router and now I can surf the net from anywhere in the house, or on campus.There's probably a feature/price point that favors any given brand out there; I'd recommend you figure out the specifics you want (minimum requirements and stretch goals) and then price various laptops against your requirements -- it makes it much easier to shop competitively when you can compare apples to apples.Another thought: you may want to wait to purchase hardwar -- and especially software -- until you're officially enrolled as a student.  A number of places offer heavy discounts to students, particularly on software (I picked up MS Office Pro at the academic rate for under $200, which was far better than both the street price and the "bundle" price I'd have paid to have Dell load it on the system.  For all the Office haters out there -- I don't have a choice, short of pirating software, since Office is the standard both at work and where I go to school.)</blockquote>

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