Last Minute Advice

Check out eMachines. You can get much, much more for the same price. There is another brand similar to the eMachines as well that I can't think of now that offers the same bang for the buck. Hopefully someone here will post the maker for you.

Gateway? Isn't Gateway = eMachines?

Gateway bought eMachines, but they remain separate. It isn't Gateway though.

I think you can do better for $1500. that athlon-xp processor isn't very good compared to what you could get. I recommend getting a centrino machine since you're not into gaming. By sacrificing a video card you can get more ram or a dvd-burner or a bigger hard drive or all three. you might want to look at something like this

Cool. I hate when companies merge production lines (e.g. DaimlerChrysler).

To the original poster: Those are Canadian dollars? If so, not a bad 'top. Might want to make an aftermarket RAM upgrade.

But if you can hold out a bit look at eMachines and Averatec.

Bear in mind, given the link he provided that he is Canadian. Unfortunately, our Canadian compatriots on these forums must pay more for their systems.

following up on my previous post, I think the 1280-C with 512MB of ram and a 60 gig 5400rpm HD would be great for you, and it comes to exactly $1500 lol.

I have a Presario R3240CA, which looks exactly the same as yours but with different innards (Athlon 64 3200+).

- I find the keyboard to be very decent, but the touchpad could be moved over to the left side a bit because you sometimes hit it. You can turn off the touchpad as needed however. There are better keyboards (e.g., IBM) but you'll pay twice as much.
- The screen is very nice. I didn't want one of those "superbright" screens but I was worried that the Presario screen wouldn't be too good because it looked washed out in the store. However, I'm very impressed. Nice, bright, with excellent contrast.
- Very robust latch. Doesn't look like it will break easily.
- Outside is black plastic. Some might think it's cheap and it will pick up the natural oils from your hands over time, but hey, if you're hauling it around, plastic takes a beating and still looks okay.
- I found that the R3000 and Pavillon ZV5000 series seem to have accessories available at Best Buy (e.g., longer life batteries). You don't have to order and wait around for accessories.
- The laptop is on the heavy side: about 7.5 to 8 lbs. Keep that in mind if you're traveling from class to class. If you plan to move it a lot, get a backpack, not a shoulder bag
- In conclusion, a decent laptop with some really good features but some shortcomings. However, very good value for the money.

Are you sure you want to get it from Future Shop? What about Best Buy or Staples or Radio Shack? I got mine from Staples. Keep in mind after sales service and support. Future Shop does not have a great reputation. Some places may price-match.

Good luck.

http://www.e4me.com/products/product...Machines_M6811

You can get an additional 100-200 off this price as well, usually in the form of an instant rebate.

Check out staples: http://www.staples.ca/ENG/Catalog/ca...affixedcode=WW

They have the laptop for the same price, but comes with a free wireless router. (that way you could have wireless internet in your house). I'd say buy it at Staples instead. Besides it is 14 cents cheapter at Staples. lol.

15" customizable laptop from futureshop starting price 1249,99$
http://www.futureshop.ca/cto/cto_cus...6&WLBS=fsweb22

I assume that your budget is $1500 CANADIAN. Right? in that case if you want to avoid the 15% tax by buying from US you will have to look for a laptop at ~1150 or so - I hope I haven't misunderstood anything because I am a bit confused by the prices of the laptops that have been recommended to you so far. Those were some nice laptops but they were more expensive than 1500 CAN.
For laptops at these prices, I guess your best bet would be www.bestbuy.com. There are some very nice machines there and at prices that will fit your budget. I would focus on Averatec, HP, Compaq, and above all eMachines. The M68** series of eMachines uses a very good base from Arima which has ventilation superior to any other casing I have come upon on these forums. This allows for some hardcore OCing and thus you can get more power from a cheaper machine. Also eMachines offers the most bancg for the buck and they make laptops of great quality which is still in the shadow of this company's not so glorious recent past. Now things are very different and eMachines today has nothing to do, at least in terms of quality, with the dreaded company from 5 years ago.
The M68** has had some issues with broken hinges (only the hinge plastic cover not the hinge itself) but this was the result of a defective batch from Arima (used by VooDoo Envy 860, as well) and now everything looks OK. With Compaq and HP you will also get some solid machines. They might not have ATI 128 9700 but for their price I wouldn't expect them to have it, either.

Well, the prices at BB are WITHOUT the rebates being included in them i.e. what you see in the yellow box is the price you will pay but from that you will get some money back.
As for rebates from BB they are two kinds - rebates that BB issues and rebates from the respective manufacturer. For example on the eMachines you are interested in one of the rebates, the 150 one is from BB, while the 100 rebate is from emachines. From what I know, personal experience and other people's opinions, you shouldn't expect any problems from BB not honoring their rebate promise. I have read (never had one) of cases when manufacturers would claim to have never received the rebate letter and this basically makes it hard to get your money unless you sue them or something. But even these cases are not wide-spread, IMO.
As for the laptops you like, they have basically the same components apart from their CPUs and GPUs. I liked the CPUs in the HP and the eMachines more (higher clockspeed and more L2 cache) than that of the Compaq but the Compaq is the only one of the three that comes with DEDICATED memory for the GPU. The other two have shared GPU memory which means that Graphics may use memory from your system RAM when needed. Given that all three do not have abundance of RAM, shared GPU memory would slow down your system's performance.
To tell you the truth, I cannot give you mich advice on that which GPU is better (although I believe the Gforce 440 on the Compaq would be the best choice from these three) namely because I have never been into gaming and have never really been interested in GPU performance of older Graphic cards like these we have here.
I hope that somebody else can give you a more thorough advice on the GPUs under question, apart from that I think the specs of these machines are very similar.
Oh, one other thing - I noticed that the Compaq comes with 256 RAM which will leave one RAM slot available for upgrade with no need for you to throw out old RAM sticks. This is assuming the the 256 RAM comes in 1 stick of 256 and not in 2x128 config. The eMachines has 512RAM as is but this is in 2x256 so if you want to add RAM in the future you will have to get rid of one stick.

Ok, as far as the Athlon XP-M cpus go I just don't think that PROVIDED THEY ARE THE SANE CORE the clock speed of 2800+ will be so much higher than that of 3000+, actually it should be the other way around. SInce the BB website do NOT provide enough info on the cpus I would just walk-in a BB store and make their life difficult with questions about those three models and especially their cpus. I am positive that the cpus of the Compaq in BB and FS aren't the Barton core XP-Ms for the Barton cpus have 512MB L2 cache and these have only 256. The Cpus in the HP and the eMachines however seem to be Barton XP-Ms.
Here is a link to an on-line vendor that sells such cpus. Look at them and see the above for yourself. These cpus are the "Barton" core Athlin XP-Ms which are the best of their kind. Ask BB salesmen if their cpus are of this kind - and ask several people cause chances are just one won't know this.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...codevalue=4181

Again, I will try to summerize the above because it may be confusing to you - the HP and eMachines in BB have better CPUs than both Compqs (in BB and FS) but both HP's and eMach's GPUs are with shared memory and not dedicated (better) as are the Compaqs in both BB and FS.
The two Compaqs seem to have pretty much the same CPU with negligable diferances. Their GPUs are also the same. The one in BB however comes with a wide 15.4inch screen and 60GB HD while the one in FS has the 15.0 inch screen and 40GB HD. It really depends on your screen preferences and HD capacity needs which one is better for you. All the rest is basically identical.
My advice is again go to BB and FS and see for yourself which one you like most - this is a luxury that buying on-line (like me and many others here) doesn't give you.
Hope this helps