> I'm disinclined to buy a Dell, because that's what my current one is, and both it and my dad's Dell desktop started fucking up at only the two-year mark, to degrees that were never able to be fully repaired.
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My experience with Dell is the exact opposite - provided you keep them from overheating all the Dells (admittedly one laptop and the rest desktops) have performed and survived extremely well.
And overheating is a problem with any laptop...
> No fucking Macs, thank you. I'm not interested in embracing "the Mac lifestyle," or whatever the fuck you Mac users call the Scientology Kool-Aid that you drink that gives you Mac User Autism (I mean, no offense, but you people are even worse about that shit than advocates of the Metric system), and more importantly, I'm very accustomed to PC.
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That's going to impress Jason...
> Ideally, I'm looking for something in the $500 range, but I'm flexible, because I also want something that can save, load, display and play ... um, picture files and audiovisual recordings (I trust I don't need to elaborate on this one).
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Although I can't recommend a model for you, I would be vary wary of buying a new PC at the moment on account of the abomination that is Vista. (We're transferring to it on one site at work and have had nothing but trouble). If you do get a Vista PC (laptop or otherwise) make sure you have AT LEAST 2GB of memory.
You might want to have a look at the second-hand market - this will get you a fairly cheap computer with something that isn't Vista on it.