ur help and info needed for new laptop

my bro is coming next week from us. i want him to bring a laptop for me. so plzz reply as soon as possible.

which company’s laptop is good. (dell, acer, hp, etc…)
what are the latest windows operating system? i know about vista and windows 7. i checked the vista site. found two home editions. basic and premium. which one will be good for home or personal use? what about windows 7? is it good? is it better than vista? these laptops comes with a particular configuration or different configurations (like ram, mem, etc… – i mean if a dell laptop is supplied with vista home basic edition then all the dell laptop with vista home basic edition will have the same configuration or will have different configurations too)
atlast, i will get all the important program cds like win OS, drivers and utilities, ms office, etc… wiith the laptop right?

thanxx
naren

p.s. – one more thing. what type of router or hardware firewall is good. wired or wireless. which are the good ones and the best?

I think they’re all pretty decent. (HP, Dell, Gateway, etc.). I would stay away from Sony though (way overpriced). Also, HP/Compaqs come with a LOAD of crapware in them preinstalled.
Vista versions, I would go for vista Home Premium. Windows 7 isn’t officially released yet.

If you are getting Vista home premium, 2 gigs of RAM minimum. Most have at least 2 gigs nowadays but some are sold with vista home premium and 1 gig of RAM. Trust me, vista home premium should have 2 gigs (especially if you don’t know how to tweak windows). If you go for Vista Basic, 1 gig should suffice.

You should get a windows OS recovery disk(s) with it. nowadays, companies like HP/Compaq just store the backup windows OS files on a separate partition on your HDD and windows will come with a program where it lets you burn the windows recovery discs onto your own DVDs. (When I got my laptop, I just called up HP and they sent me the recovery discs free of charge.)

MS office (word, spreadsheet, etc.) is installed on all vista OS’s as a free trial. (like 60 days or so). then you’ll have to pay after that or use something else.

With routers, Linksys is pretty popular. Some ISPs give them to you for free as long as you use them as your ISP. (I love my Verizon VIOS router from my Verizon ISP.) Most have hardware firewalls nowadays. And just about everyone of them has wireless capabilities.

thanxx replying. i have decided on dell with vista home premium. but i have to decide on the category and model. there are four categories dell inspiron mini, inspiron laptops, studio laptops and studio xps laptops. which is the best suited categories for home or personal use among these. after deciding category i can decide on model. any suggestions buddy? it will be helpful.

thanxx
naren

I found a Inspiron 1525 laptop (see the animated pic below for the specs) for about $600. I haven’t had any problems with it and think it is a good lappy.

Unless you’re traveling with the laptop, there is no need for the inspiron mini (smaller almost always = more expensive). even if you ever do travel with it, the cheapest laptops of today are still small enough to be considered convenient.

Studio laptops are the stylish, customized, decked out laptops (e.g. fingerprint reader, back-lit keyboard, etc.) And dell XPS’s are gaming laptops. So the regular inspiron should be fine for the home.