What's a good laptop to buy?

[Nyleo]

So title says a lot. I'm going to be heading to the 11Th grade this fall, and I'm planning on buying a laptop since I'm sure I'll be at the library a lot researching ACT / SAT materials and whatnot.

I've worked this summer and manged to save a bit over $400. My parents said agreed to pay the remainder; I'm looking for one for research, can hold a good amount of music, movies, and picture, and is also for casual gaming. I also do a lot of software programming, such as Sony Vegas and Photo Shop. I was thinking of getting a Mac, but I've never had one and have always been a PC person.

[Bulf]

I'm a computer noob, but I'd suggest going for something with 4+ gigs of ram, and 320+gb hdd. When it comes to brands and processors, I'm lost.

[~*Red*~]

I have an Apple MacBook Pro and Macs are the best laptop I've seen.

[Psyco_Panda]

For gaming, DO NOT GO WITH ALIENWERE not worth the trouble

[Alphabet]

I say look through PCMag websites and whatnot. $400 isn't enough for a good laptop, but if you really need one for just school, get a netbook.(Though I hate their tinyness) Macs are not for gaming btw, so I don't suggest it. A good computer would be at least 800 or more. From what I looked up, an ASUS UL30A is really good and has long battery life.
As Ellipses said, 4GB RAM is good enough, you do not need anymore, and I suggest 500GB of memory, and you can buy external hard drives for more space.
I'm in 11th grade too! I have a school assigned netbook, Eee pc =/
ooshy ooshy ooshy

[Hanamaru Kunikida]

I was going to suggest building a desktop but you said you need the laptop to do your homework. You can't go wrong with what Moko suggested.

[blueangel06661]

Reasearch. Though personally I think Toshiba's are good. I've had mine for about 5 years. The best thing to do is read consumer reviews on the laptops you are looking at. Also the higher the RAM the better.

[Cobra Commander]

Dell/Alienware offers a netbook that will do all of that stuff, for about $900 if I recall. You will want the 4g of ram for Windows 7. Also, newegg.com sells a netbook, I believe by ASUS that offers the nVidia Ion2 graphics "card" and 2g of ram for $450. I was thinking of getting that one for mysef.

If you're looking for a brand recommendation, all I can say is that I've had my Dell for six years and it is only recently giving me issues - which I believe to be software issues at this time. It plays WoW on the integrated graphics, though on the lowest settings. Whatever you get, you want to make sure the graphics option supports HARDWARE TRANSFORM & LIGHTING or else you will not be gaming much at all.

protip - the stock integrated Intel Media Accelerator or whatever the hell they call it now generally does not support Hardware T&L.

If you were to get a desktop instead, which I believe to be a better investment, I'd say build your own, or go to newegg and get one from them. I have a friend who got an excellent system for under $700. My personal preference is to piece it together myself, so I can decide on every aspect of the computer. I am not an elitist or a brand snob, but I do believe in getting the best bang for my buck.