it depends. you can find a LOT of cheap laptops out there (best buy, walmart) but in my opinion, the thing that makes/breaks a laptop is dedicated video card RAM (not found in laptops from best buy...
yeah man, 3 years ago 512MB was plenty. I buy machines with plans to buy more RAM in the future ... not a new machine. Also - Vista is a RAM hog.
Vista runs great with 2GB, though. If you want to use any more than 3GB of RAM, you have to go with 64-bit Vista or XP, which is a bit of a crapshoot at this point.
i say Vista runs merely "OK" with 2GB. I'm not like, impressed by the speed. It works normally - the equivalent of XP with 1GB, I think. I also use Readyboost (2GB on an SD card) which probably hel...
i see where you're coming from. but i'd just rather have a new laptop at that point.
I gotta post on my results on installing Vista 64bit. Worked like a champ, install was extremely smooth.
Installed Ubuntu (as part of a dual boot), which works well. I haven't gotten too much of a chance to use Ubuntu, but I did struggle with the "dual display" issue - I have a 17inch LCD hooked up to my laptop, and use both simultaneously. In Ubuntu - that doesn't work.
To dual boot Ubuntu, I used a program called "Wubi", which makes it SO easy my grandmother could do it. You install Wubi, it asks you a couple of questions, and then it downloads and installs Ubuntu for you. No partitioning, no resizing of drives - it does it all automatically, and configures the bootloader. When you are tired of Ubuntu and want to remove the whole thing (including the dual boot configuration) you just remove the program from "Add/remove programs" in Vista.
The only problem I encountered was that the first time I tried to install Wubi, it somehow got hung up on the Ubuntu install and kept rebooting my computer. No problem. I booted back into windows, uninstalled Wubi, rebooted, then re-installed Wubi. This time Ubuntu worked perfectly, but now I had two "Ubuntu" choices in my dual boot setup (ok now it was 3 boot setup). So I used a program called EasyBCD to fix it - which was VERY easy.
So now things are good, just gotta find some time to spend with Ubuntu. I have heard that there are programs to use wifi syncing with an iPod Touch over Ubuntu - that would be sweet to get going.