I think I'm going to buy this laptop:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834214185

The specs are really good. The reason why I'm buying this is because my current laptop is very slow at 1.3ghz CPU running slackware with only about 700mb of RAM. I do multitasking a lot with this laptop and it's still running OK with slackware but sometimes freezes or crashes. It's not very fast surfing the net with multiple tabs and especially while viewing flash videos at youtube. Right now I'm running xfce because I heard it's a lighter program. I've heard on IRC that the new xfce will get heavier and more bloated, but I'm not sure if that is true.

Btw, I run programs such as Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird, XChat, Mousepad, Geany, and other programs that come with xfce. With some of those programs opened and viewing flash movies like on youtube or netflix, my current laptop would either freeze or crash.

Anyway, what I'm actually trying to do is preparing for the future and I think that this laptop will set me up for at least a couple of years--maybe more than 4 years. I'm hoping with this new laptop that I'm going to get will solve all the slowness, laggy issues, and crashes.

What do you guys think...You think it's a good buy at this time? Or should I wait for something better? Any suggestions?

I can only afford below $600 US dollars. Thanks for reading

I have no personal experience with Toshiba Satellite, but my father got one and had to return it right away and a friend said he's had issues with a couple Toshiba's. We've had good luck at work with HP, though we get the "Elite" models rather than the probooks that would be more in your price range. So I don't know if they're any better.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834157673

--Bryan

Try lubuntu.

Back around the turn of the century I had a couple of Toshiba's with WinXP.

They were top-notch machines and had a really nice feature that I haven't seen since: a physical volume control for the built-in speakers. But that was a while ago and I don't know whether their rep has changed.

Both of them got stolen: one from my car while I was Christmas shopping in Delaware and one by a sneak thief in Long Island.

After the second one was stolen, I got a Dell and since then it's been all Dell all the time. Dell has been good to me.

Buy what you like. That said,

If you keep the bloatware to a minimum, a lot of even older boxes should run respectably. It's interesting to see netbooks with 500Mhz cpus and low memory out there without a lot of shouting about performance. A clean OS, tight control of eye candy, etc is often what is required.

I have a twincore turion 64 bit and an athlonxp 32. In some cases, the Athlon is faster (single heavy tasks) but with compiles, the turion streaks away. If you need a laptop, be careful of weight. My HP laptop is 2.6Kg. If I'm walking to College (45 mins) that is a serious drawback! And if you're not carting it round, do you need a laptop?

It says it's sold out now!