Question….Who has the best prices on Laptops?

CRACKHEADS

The Toshiba in the link WOK sent is a better deal still. Awesome price for what you are getting. (less than $500!)
That Toshiba has a 320Gb drive so a bit more than WOK’s even, and 3GB memory, expandable to 8GB (which is easy to do and memory is pretty cheap).
The difference in processors is not as easy to define as the Toshiba has an AMD processer, and the other has an Intel processor. So you can not exactly match the clock speeds.
The AMD is listed is 2Ghz and the Intel is 2.2Ghz.
The HP has 4GB memory and the Tohsiba has 3GB, but 3GB is plenty and even adding more memory will still put you at a cost point below the HP.

It used to be that AMD was a bit faster even at the same clock speeds, but I haven’t really paid much attention to that lately so I don’t know if it is still true or not. eiter way, between 2 & 2.2, even I wouldn’t notice the difference. I just go by a general comparison between similar speeds for similar processors to group those together for comparison AMD vs AMD and Intel vs Intel, then I look at the other features of each PC in each group, then finally, the value, cost etc. to determine which one in the end may be the best deal.
I was looking at this one in comparison. the others in the listing seemed pretty similar and I chose to compare an HP rather than an Acer as I feel the value is more comparible brand wise. (I like HPs better than Acer )

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11489111&whse=BC&topnav=&cat=78129&hierPath=56670*&lang=en-US

I would go with the Toshiba in this comparison though. Toshiba is very reliable. I would avoid an Acer, Asus, Gateway, if i could get a Toshiba for the same price or less. Lenovo is IBM, Dell and HP you have heard of and they are all ok too. I would prefer (in no order of preference), Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, HP myself.

More info for you.

Memory and hard drive space are more important than clock speed of the processor.
There is not all that much noticeble difference to most users between a processor with a clock speed of 3.5Ghz or one with 2.8Ghz.

The memory is the biggest factor. It allows the PC to operate with the software in memory if you have more, rather than having to continually temporarilly swap bits of it back to the hard drive and back again to make room in the memory for it to run. (FYI- this is called the “swap file”)

A dual or quad core pc would be great. :8 They essentially have 2 or 4 processors running at the same time to speed up your calculations.

Also look to see if the video memory is “shared” or “dedicated”.
Nothing terribly wrong with shared memory PCs, it works and is less expensive to make a laptop like that, but just not the ultimate choice if you want the most kickass you can get.

Shared means that the video card of the laptop uses some of the standard memory so it slightly reduces the memory available to the processor. It is also slower because the processor has to help the video card access the memory more than if the video card had it’s own memory to take the load off of the processor and the memory available.

Check out this website for more info.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-clock-speed.htm