[JERRY2KONE]

We have 8 laptops in our family. Three of them are Macbook Pros. The only reason we have the Apples is because the school our kids go to require them. The one I am using right now is a Toshiba and it works great for $700. Intel I-5, 360gb Hdd. We have a 6 year old Dell that still works, and we use that one for visitor that stay with us on vacation. Otherwise we hate it. We also have two HP laptops and they seem to work just fine for the money. If I have learned one thing it is that you can make just about any laptop last a long time if you truly take care of it, and keep your anti-virus up to date. Its pretty easy today with automatic updates as long as you keep your software current.

Considering your first post about considering $1800 for a laptop I would just get yourself a decent Toshiba, Lanovo, or HP laptop for around $700, and then build yourself a pretty nice desktop to do all of your household PC stuff including the home theater setup. We have a ten year old Compaq desktop in the kids TV room for a media PC, and they stream all of the TV shows they want and listen to music anytime they feel the need. I have a home made desktop as our Command Center that controls all of our network needs and keeps an eye on everything the kids are up to computer wise. Trust me you don't need a $2000 laptop to be satisfied. deversify and this way you have a back up in case anything goes wrong. Use a portable HDD and do periodic backups and you will never run into a problem with a dead PC again. Hell you can get a terribite Passport that fits into your shirt pocket for under $100. If that is not big enough to store your backup data needs, then you need to be using a server.