Looking to buy a laptop, $500-700 budget

[Spacepopsicle]

Hey guys,

I'm looking to get a laptop for school and just general use, internet/IM/maybe converting a movie or something here and there. I don't need to run games or anything on it, so I don't need anything too fancy, but at the same time I want it to run smoothly.

I'm thinking along the lines of something with 2 gigs of RAM and an ok dual core processor, like this

Satellite L300-ST2501 Laptop - Toshiba (with another gig of RAM added to it)

To me that looks pretty good, but I don't a ton about hardware so for all I know that processor really sucks. I'm hoping someone can help me out, either letting me know if that laptop I linked is a good buy or linking me to something better.

Money for me is really really tight, so the bottom end of that budget is very much preferred. That being said if I could get a video card on it that would run WoW decently and still be under $700 I'd consider that >.>

Thanks

 

[Nukem]

Not bad... I'm not partial to Toshiba myself, but not bad for the money. Can't find much else for that kind of price and keep the system specs up as much as possible. Now if you wanted to go higher end, I found this if you want a dedicated card and keep it around for a few years.

Newegg.com - Acer Aspire AS6930-6560 NoteBook Intel Core 2 Duo T5800(2.00GHz) 16" Wide XGA 4GB Memory 320GB HDD DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GS - Laptops / Notebooks

but it's not really on the portable side if that is what you want...

you could try the MSI Wind if your looking for portable... WOW is supported by the 945 graphics... Not saying that it would look awesome, but I'm sure it would be playable.

MSI Wind U100-422CA N270 1.60GHz 10" 160GB HDD 1GB PC2-5300 (DDR2-667) 802.11b/g/n Windows XP Home at ZipZoomfly


SO I guess it just depends on what you want to look at... Laptop ot Netbook type? drawback to the Wind is no DVD player, so everything would be online or DL'ed.

 

[lancec2c30]

Give these a look.

Dell Vostro Laptops

 

[Difolo]

I've heard good things about the studio lines from Dell, and Dell always has coupons floating around.

 

[grasswater]

For yoru price, you can have a look at the Dell Vostro 1710 2.0GHz 3GB 320GB 17in laptop it is now on sale for $599, that's quite nice choice if you don't mind the big screen, it comes with Intel Core 2 Duo T5870 2.0GHz CPU, 8-cell battery and Vista.