Glad to see that no one in this thread has recommended Gateway, but I'll nevertheless warn the OP and any other readers away from it. My laptop itself is OK, BUT Gateway customer service and technical support are the worst I've experienced with any company. To make a long story short: repeated and very time-consuming problems, starting with my being given wrong information by the telephone sales agent re what my unit included, continuing through having to repeatedly call Gateway just to get the unit shipped, and continuing yet again with having to make numerous calls and send numerous emails over the course of a over month (and getting completely conflicting responses) to get a (fully warranteed) problem fixed that should only have taken a few days. I suspect that, perhaps because the company is financially squeezed, it does not bother with training its personnel or updating its systems. Regardless, Gateway is a disaster.