New PC
 

Hey chums; I'm looking to buy a PC for college next August, and I really don't know what I should choose.

All I know is that I need a good, reliable, affordable notebook that I can at least run GWX on (:ping:).

And by affordable, I'm talking $200 per pay period, seventeen year-old part time Wal-Mart cashier moving hundreds of miles away for pre-Law studies wage.

Suggestions would be good, thanks.

I don't know anything about laptops but thought I'd say how smart you are to square away a chunk of your pay every period. If you make a regimen and stick with it, you can do anything. It's how I've paid for about the last three years of college.

The good news is that you have some time. A laptop with a semi-decent graphics card can be a tall order. However, at this point, allow me to recommend a machine that I sent my brother off to school with this year. It's not the cheapest of all, but with an additional 1GB of RAM (if installing by yourself, this will be really inexpensive) it should do what you're asking of it with no problems.

Laptop:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220227
1GB additional RAM:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820134129

I was actually considering the very same one, but a friend of mine who is a junior at Purdue Universiy has nearly convinced me to go all UNIX. It's an idea that I've kicked around for a very long time, but never acted on. I'm looking at a customized(ish) laptop from System76 (Ubuntu exclusive PC) and I could run GWX on it with "Wine" windows runtime environment, and I wouldn't have to worry about all of the securty issues of running XP or Vista....so yeah.

Build your own; newegg.com is a good starting place.