My current laptop is the HP Pavilion dv6; my daughter purchased two of these laptops on Black Friday in 2009, after waiting in line at Staples for hours, one for herself and one for me, as an early Christmas gift. Priced at $199.00, this was a steal for this machine and well worth the long wait in line.

This Pavilion model is top of line and looks classy with a dark bronze finish with the signature HP swirl designs. It has a 15.6 inch screen, and weighs about 6 pounds which makes it easy to take just about anywhere. The keyboard on the lap top is full size so it is very easy to type on, unlike the net book that this little prize replaced. The touchpad is the HP ClickPad with the technology to turn it on and off, which is great, because I prefer my trackball and my daughter prefers the touch pad. This laptop is also equipped with a built in web cam, a DVD drive, wireless LAN card, an onboard card reader that reads most of the external memory cards available today, built in speakers along with an earphone jack and a microphone jack. This model has four USB slots, two located on each side, which is great to connect peripheral hardware, such as my trackball or my iPod cord needed to charge my iPod and sync with iTunes. On the inside it is equipped with an Intel Core i3 processor (2.40GHz) and Windows 7 64-bit operating system, which runs any of my frequently used programs superfast. We are both college students and use Microsoft Office programs often, like Word, Excel and Power Point, along with iTunes. The video quality is great, as a long time desk top user I never knew that a lap top could provide this high quality video. I have watched DVD movies on my laptop along with many episodes of my shows from the internet.

Another plus that came with this laptop is the LightScribe technology that allows you to label a DVD or CD by etching the title you select or create yourself right on to the disc, a special LightScribe disc is required to take advantage of this feature. My only complaint with this laptop is the battery life and the AC adapter. The battery is a standard 6-Cell 55WHr Lithium-Ion Battery but it never lasts for more than two hours tops and the AC adapter connections appear to wear over time, sometimes it takes three or four tries to get the AC Adapter to show that is charging the battery, it appears to be a problem with the connection to the computer itself or between the box that joins the two cords. We are in the process of looking into getting the battery in mine replaced or the AC adapter, whatever the charging problem results to be.

Overall a great machine and well worth the money! I would recommend this to anyone.

You must first decide what uses the laptop will provide. Will it be used for occasional web surfing or emails, gaming, storing music or data, watching movies, or all of the above? Once you decide its use, then you can begin to choose which laptop you wish to purchase.

If you wish to just web surf occasionally and have email access then purchase the bottom of the line cheap laptops. Laptops become more expensive if you wish to put them to more use. If you want to take and store pictures, you need a laptop with an SD slot and USB ports. Something to find out is the number of USB ports, especially using various devices like a web cam or digital camera. If you wish to watch movies on your laptop, then you will need one that has a DVD player. If you want to store a large volume of music or other data, then you will need a larger hard drive. And if you are into gaming, then you need to purchase a laptop with higher end specs such as more processor, more powerful video card, and a bigger hard drive with more ram and drive space. You may choose the screen size depending on how you wish to use the laptop. The larger the screen, the heavier the laptop will be, but easier on your eyes after an extended period of time looking at the screen.

Be sure your laptop has built-in wireless networking in order to use your laptop anywhere. If the laptop will be used as a desktop computer at home as well as taking it on the road, you need to purchase a docking station, also known as a port replicator, which allows your laptop to be used as a desktop computer.

One final word of caution on making the final decision, if you compromise buying a smaller laptop, you will end up with fewer features then the bigger, heavier laptops. Please be careful in choosing which laptops for sale best suits you.