Originally posted by Blinn I have been looking at the dell's. Here's one i customized, please tell me what you think. Inspiron 5150 Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 processor at 3.06GHz w/ 15" SXGA+ Display Memory 256MB,333MHz,2 DIMMs Video Card 32MB ATi MOBILITY™ RADEON™ 9000 Hard Drive 30GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive Operating System Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Network Adapters (NICS) Integrated Network Card 8XDVD Primary Battery 94 WHr Lithium-Ion Primary Battery It came to $2180 CDN, taxes and shipping included. Actually, I wouldn't go for that. The video card will slow you down and after Windows XP + Maya, you'll definitily see some slow downs because of your RAM. Even though you're going to college, I still suggest you get a desktop. My guess is you're not going to need to take the computer to classes and when you arent working in the dorm, you can work in the lab. Build a desktop, dude. For $500, I built myself: P4 1.7 gigz 512 DDR RAM 52x (or 56x, I forget, i'm not around it at the moment) Cd Drive 48x CD-RW Geforce 4 MX 64 Meg (I plan upgrading it) 40GB Harddrive (more than enough for me. I have less than 8 gigs taken up)