Hey Rtech,
Min 30 Gb HD 30GB or 40GB will be fine if you dont plan to have tons of movies and videos on your laptop.
min 256 mbRam upgradable Go for 512. It will make a difference to how fast your laptop feels outdated.
CDR/RW or DVD R You want a drive that can play DVDs and burn CDRs and CDRWs. Makes financial sense, plus i doubt you will ever have the need to burn 4GB of data onto a dvd!
Preferably lightweight and resistant to rough use Toshibas and IBMs are built tough IMO (but i hate IBM designs)
Lastly, I can't decide whether is should spring the extra bucks for a centrino or a PIV is good enough. I'm still not very clear on the advantages of centrino either actually.
Centrino. Reasons as above in this thread.
And when it comes to brands i lean towards (in this order)
Toshiba
Dell
Hp
IBM (my sis has one and i hate it... i just hate IBM laptops!!..badly designed and ugly...)
hope that helps.
cya
R
ps - i just got a mail from my college, thought id just put the stats in here coz its a laptop thread - heres whats waiting for me when i go back to college -
HP nx7010 customized
Centrino 1.7Ghz
1GB 333Mhz DDR Ram
60GB 5400RPM HDD (i was dissapointed by this
)
15.4" 1920x1200 LCD WUXGA
DVD writer
ATI Radeon 9200 w/ 64MB
Wifi & bluetooth
not bad id say.... the school got it for $2000 (people doing my course are "forced" to buy this
)
cya