I would not suggest a dell or a gateway for sure. Whats your budget, if you are looking for a laptop less then 1000 dollars just forget it, coz u get all those crappy celron processor. You want to go with an AMD mobile processor coz mobile processor comsume less wattage that means less heat in the compact space and more speed and more battery life. The new amd tuiron is a nice one, you can find one from acer, the acer site is not that frendly but their laptops are great. dont buy andything less than 512 MB ram and please stress on the display size and what kinda a display you want. the only good laptops dell has is the xen series its their gaming laptop. my first preference is acer then tosibal, then, HP or other brand. you also want a hardisk with ample of space coz for me 80 GB runs out in months time.