It would really depend on your needs and planned use for the laptop. Is it going to be carried around or just sit on a desk? Does battery life matter? What kind of activities do you plan on doing on it? Basically, if you could imagine a triangle and you place the following three criteria on each corner: Price Power Portability You need to figure out where your point lands. If you need portable, go for a netbook, if you need power, then a cheapo dell/hp. If you need a bit of both then that’s where the first series of questions come in. Answer them and this becomes a lot easier.