School starts for me in a little over a month and half. I've been contemplating about getting a new laptop for school. The current one I have, I've used for 3 years now. It's the Sony Vaio VGN Laptop. It's great and I love it, but my 12 year old niece really needs, okay more like wants a laptop and so I've decided that I'm going to give my laptop to her to use for school when I visit home and get myself a new one for this new academic school year.

Here's a pic of the laptop that I currently have. It's the Sony Vaio VGN. It's a great laptop. But I want one that has a built-in webcam. hehe!  

How on earth am I going to afford a new laptop? Well, I just conversed over the phone with my Bill Gates Millenium Scholarship Counselor earlier today to request for a budget ad-on to my scholarship amount for the 08-09 academic school year due to increase in tuition. Tuition at Harvard went up to $56,506. The cost of living has also gone up. Half of my tuition gets paid for through the Gates Millenium Scholarship Program and the other half gets paid for by Harvard through my Presidential Fellowship. Anyway, I got approved for $5,000 extra which will be direct deposited into my bank account in two weeks on top of the other remaining amount that I get per semester which is $15,000. So per academic school year, I get about $30,000 alone in scholarship money from my Gates Millenium Scholarship Award which covers for housing expenses (room + board), utilities, food, books, transportation, travels (airfares) and personal/miscellaneous stuff. The other $30,000 comes from Harvard which covers for the cost of attendance. Anyway, the extra $5,000 that I'm getting from GMSP, I can use to spend on anything I want for school. I just have to send a copy of the receipts to prove that I did spend that money for school and academic reasons. lol. Yay, I love you Bill Gates! So therefore, I'm going to invest that in a new laptop. Not all of it though. I'm going to use some of it to buy other school supplies that I need and of course, as I do each year, I'm going to go on a shopping spree and will be buying myself some new clothes for school come Fall '08. hahaha.  

So help me decide on a new laptop. Any recommendations you guys? I want to try a different brand. I love Sony and all, but perhaps other brands might have other special things to offer that Sony doesn't? I also want one that has a built-in webcam. I'm open to purchasing other awesome brands out there. Other brands that come to mind right now are Toshiba, HP, Gateway, Dell and the Apple MacBook. I'd like to try a new one. Which one do you recommend of the five or which one is the best of the five? Or feel free to name other great brands that I haven't listed. Care to share? Which one do you have? My spending limit is roughly $5,000. With $5,000 (okay, with tax and all, make that $4,500 instead because the other $500, I'm going to use to buy other school supplies that I need and clothes for the new school year...lol). So what's the best laptop that I can get with $4,500 (including taxes, of course)? Help me decide please.

Thanks!

Okay, I think I'm in love with this laptop. hehehe. I have two weeks to decide before my scholarship money arrives.

Apple® - MacBook® Pro with 17" Display Price : $2,799.99 (the price is perfect and affordable!)

Product Features

• Intel® Core™2 Duo mobile processor with 800MHz frontside bus, 6MB shared L2 cache and 2.5GHz processor speed
•  
• 2GB PC2-5300 DDR2 memory for multitasking power (2 SoDIMM slots)
• Slot-loading DVD±RW/CD-RW SuperDrive with double-layer support records up to 8.5GB of data or 5 hours of video using compatible DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL media
•  
• The next-generation Intel® Core™2 Duo processor is based on the innovative Intel? Core™ microarchitecture, so it runs faster and is more energy-efficient for cooler, quieter operation
•  
• 17" widescreen TFT-LCD display with 1680 x 1050 resolution
•  
• 250GB Serial ATA hard drive (5400 rpm)
• NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 512MB GDDR3 SDRAM; dual display and video mirroring capabilities; dual-link DVI and VGA outputs (DVI-to-VGA adapter included)
• 2 FireWire ports (one 800 Mbps and one 400 Mbps) and 3 high-speed USB 2.0 ports; built-in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) wireless interface
• Built-in AirPort Extreme wireless network card (802.11n); 10/100/1000Base-T Gigabit Ethernet LAN
•  
• Built-in iSight webcam, stereo speakers and microphone
•  
• Solid-state trackpad with multitouch gesture support allows you to use specialized touch gestures to navigate your applications, enlarge text, advance through a photo album or adjust an image with ease
• Weighs 6.8 lbs. and measures only 1" thin for portable power; lithium-polymer battery with up to 4.5 hours of battery life; illuminated keyboard with ambient light sensors
• Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" preinstalled; software package included with Time Machine, Quick Look, Spotlight, Dashboard, iChat, Safari, iCal, Photo Booth, Xcode Developer Tools, iLife '08 (includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, GarageBand) and more 

So what do you guys think? Should I get this one or should I shop around some more?

Love the Mac book, but the new SONY VAIO VGN series is not bad either(Dual Core CPU, WebCam and at least 3GB of Memory are standard)....Get another SONY VGN..

Price: $789.00*

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/321957-321957-64295-321838-306995-3687084.html

Why have to buy expensive labtop just for school. The decent labtop cause about $399,i think is good enough for school work and online surfing.

Thanks everyone (Hemsoo, Jmon, Nyaya) for all your wonderful recommendations. I'm going to visit Best Buy and The Apple Store this weekend to check out several laptops that I'm interested in just see which one I really like and of course, I will def take your recommendations into consideration as well. Once again, thanks everyone for your help. I appreciate it.

Jmon, who said that I'll be hauling my laptop around campus huh? lol. I'll buy a stroller suitcase and stroll it around campus if I have to. I'm thinking about using a stroller suitcase instead of a backpack now because I have so many things. My backpack weighs more than me and I think I'm losing weight from carrying so much stuff on my back. So when school starts, I might just carry a mini-briefcase and put all my stuff in a stroller suitcase. Therefore, I don't have to carry my books or laptop around campus.

Impact, I'm not concerned with the price. Why should I buy or settle for a cheaper laptop? I'm all about brand and quality when it comes to laptops. I don't care how much it costs. First of all, I'm not paying for it. If I was paying for it, then yes, I would settle for a cheaper laptop you know? But since my scholarship money is paying for it (in which the money comes directly from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, via GMSP) and since I have a spending limit of $4,500, it only makes sense for me to get the best laptop there is out there. Even my scholarship counselor was like that money is for me to use for school purposes, so I can do whatever I want with it. Why should I settle for less than what I deserve? I want to best laptop. So far, I have my eyes on the Apple Macbook and I want the newest and latest Macbook there is out there. The Apple Macbook is a very popular brand among students here. Nearly everyone has a Macbook. haha. Whatever I want, I'm going to get.

If money not an issue, check out:  http://www.alienware.com/products/notebook-computers.aspx

if i could afford it, i'd get one of these little guys. 

ARe you serious about this?  2700 bones for a school laptop?  ARe you planning to edit a motion picture for Speilberg?  I guess being a pretigious school mean having a pretigious (expensive) laptop...not necessary.  Save the 2k and used it toward the red farari.

Any laptop with an Intel Core 2 duo is already an excellent piece of work.  The thinkpad is great for the price and it has enough capacity and capability to do anything.

Thanks, Mystic for the recommendation.  That laptop looks pretty rad, but I'm still in love with the Apple Macbook Pro though.

Haha, Saron. I guess I should have titled my thread 'Laptop recommendations for school and personal use'. For me, I believe in investing in a quality laptop for school, home and personal use.

And yes, aside from my Gates Millenium Scholarship Award, I will admit that I've been severely spoiled by Harvard University. There are so many perks and privileges granted to doctoral students such as myself. Whatever I want; I name it; and I will get it. For example, as a doctoral student, I get priority registration, priority everything, etc. If I don't like where my mailbox is located, I can ask to have it switched right away. If I want a new leather chair ordered for my office, all I have to do is put in a request for it and they will order a new one for me just like that. I'm not even kidding you. However, I refuse to abuse my perks. I guess you could say that doctoral students here at Harvard are given the 'royal treatment'. Our needs are met to the best of the school's ability, and our needs come first before anyone else's. Even before the master's students and the undergrads. Shhhhhh.....you didn't hear me saying that, k. We also get the undivided attention from all our professors. hehe.

With regards to my laptop pricing/spending amount, first, you have to understand that if I don't use up the $4,500 spending limit for my laptop, I will have to send the remaining amount back to my Gates Millenium Scholarship Counselor. Therefore, I have to use all that money up. I can spend that money on anything I want for school, but I have to make a copy of all the receipts of the school related purchases that I make and give it to my counselor so that she knows that I did, in fact, spend all that money on school related items/stuff. If you were given that amount of money to spend on a laptop, trust me, you'd prob do the same thing. You'd buy the most expensive and best laptop there is out there. That money isn't for me to save. In fact, I'm not even allowed to save it. I have to spend it all, according to my scholarship counselor.

How has the GMSP (Gates Millenium Scholarship Program) spoiled me? Well, just put it this way, if my GMS Counselor had it her way, she wouldn't even allow (nor does she want) me to work part-time during the academic school year. Why? She fears that I might lose focus in school. Although, I've proven to her over and over that I can, in fact, handle working part-time while attending school full-time. I fully understand that my counselor is only looking out for my own best interest and wants to help make life easier for me as a student (by spoiling me even more or what? ). Hello, life is comfortable and easy for me as it is already. How much more easier does she want it to get for me? Geez. lol. Of course, I could just take the easier way out and that is by not working at all (because I have the right and the means/funds to do so), and instead, just solely focus/concentrate on school and my academics, but I refuse to take the easy route. See, if I choose not to work part-time during the academic school year, all I have to do is notify my GMS Counselor and what GMSP will do then is that it will cover for any other remaining expenses (not yet listed on my financial aid award package) that I need as a student during my stay at Harvard for the entire academic school year.

For me, it's like if I don't work, then how will I know the value of money? Not to mention, life would be so boring and bland. If I get money handed down/given to me so easily, then I'm going to turn into a spoiled little brat who will start spending money like it's paper. In essence, I won't appreciate its value. My parents didn't raise me that way. They raised me to have strong work ethics as well as to realize the value of $1. How much work it even takes to earn $1 and, of course, that money doesn't grow from a tree. Well actually, if you think about it, money does grow from a tree since it is made out of paper. hehe. Okay, that's besides the point. Anyway, by getting straight A's every single semester, I've proven to her (my GMS Counselor) that I am capable and that I can indeed work part-time while still excelling in school and my academics. It's no biggie. Plus, I love working! It's so fun and it keeps me busy. So that's that. My counselor is cool with me working part-time each school year, but still insists that I don't have to work, if I don't want to. Or that if I ever change my mind, know that I still have the option of not working. Huy. Every school year, I usually work part-time as either a research assistant or a teaching fellow at my school. The pay is extremely good too and I enjoy the work that I do. It keeps me preoccupied; it gives me something to look forward to; and moreover, it helps me maintain my sanity as well as sustain my role of being a well-rounded student, like I've always been since college and high school. Most of all, I enjoy teaching and helping other students as well as doing fun (and tedious) research work with the faculty members here. lol.

Anyway, I have made up my mind. I'm getting the Apple MacBook Pro! I went to the Apple Store this past weekend to check it out and immediately fell in love with it. :sigh: 

Vanna, you've worked hard for what you have and if it means being spoiled to get what you want ... so be it.  You deserve it honey.  Anyway, if you're getting a Mac, Apple online gives you a free 8g Ipod Touch or Nano (well, you buy the thing and then send in the rebate form).  ... Have fun with your new toy!

http://www.apple.com/backtoschool/

Oh wow Nitha, I didn't even know about that. Thank you so much for letting me know. Dang, a free Apple iPod Touch or Nano? That's super cool! I would love to get a free Apple iPod Touch since I already have an Apple iPod Nano. Gosh, the Apple iPod Touch is even better than the Apple iPod Nano. LOL. That thing is crazy rad and it looks just like an Apple iPhone. Haha. I appreciate the info, sweetie.

I can't. I have to use it for school.  You can get pampered just like me. All you have to do is work really hard in school and earn really good grades. The rest will follow.

How sad me Mjas..I'm the lowest grade student of all in school. I can't reward to have a free stuff like you my dear..

Well it has been almost 1 month since you are asking for laptop Recommendation from KW members, so what is it that you are getting?
I think you most likely getting a MacBook (free iPod) and less likely getting another Window® based Notebook...