So school starts in a week and my plans for building a computer have been indefinitely delayed. I am looking for a reasonably priced laptop that still offers good performance for the cost. This would be something that I would take to school and use at home, and would be my main (but not only) computer.

• It has to be portable, but I don't really care of its size as long as I can transport it (so I don't really care how heavy it is as long as it isn't a giant behemoth).
  

• I'm not sure if I should get a netbook or a cheaper full laptop, my budget for this computer is $600-650 CAD (leaning towards full laptop)
  

• I am planning on running Windows on it, but I have a "copy laying around" so if it comes with no OS with a discount that would be fantastic.
  

• The ability to run some games would be nice (low-end graphics card or w/e if possible) but it doesn't have to be a high end gaming machine.
  

• The more hard drive space the better, and just decent whatever else (proc, RAM, etc etc) would be fantastic.
  

• Wireless G and N would be optimal, but G is mandatory (I have both at my house and my school runs G).
  

• I watch a lot of movies so a good screen would be good, no idea on size though. I don't want it to be huge, but I don't want it to be tiny either.
  

• It MUST have a good trackpad. I hate the little balls and I hate it when I can't do shit with it because the trackpad sucks.
  

If you could point me to any good deals for Canada it would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Praetor

Edit:
Another really important thing is USB 2.0. THE MORE PORTS THE BETTER, I use a lot of USB stuff.

For what you want to do I believe a Netbook would be optimal.
MSI: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152115

ASUS: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220551

The MSI is cheaper but I have been burned with MSI products before and ASUS has always served me well.

Alternatively if you want something more powerful than a netbook, try this:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152129

Wow, that seems like the exact computer I want! Thanks!

Be warned: very few netbooks have CD drives, and new games are hard to iso (as my boyfriend found out). You can get a detachable CD drive, but that can reach a hundred bucks. Netbooks are also made for word processor and internet....that's about it. That MSI is pretty decent, but I wouldn't expect miracles. If you want the best bang for your buck, check out places like MicroCenter. There prices are always the most decent. MUCH better than BestBuy. I got a laptop from them for $323 (with tax). It was on sale a couple weeks ago.
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0313525
I think this is it.

Yeah, definitely not sufficient for gaming.

I'm actually very disappointed in the graphical offerings of laptops. Trying to get anything over an 8500GT immediately jacks the price up to unreasonable levels. And with the CPU and such they're paired with, it doesn't even make sense. Sometimes I wonder if the people designing them understand their own product.

Yea. I hope that in a few months I'll be able to get a really nice gaming desktop. Hopefully custom built. The point I really was hoping to make is that you can get a VERY decent laptop at 600-650, but as you said, your graphics won't be 1337 unless you plan on dropping an extra thousand.

Not everyone games. You don't need anything more than a GMA 945 if your most graphics intensive process is watching 720p video. 1080p will be hard to do on that, but with a decent processor, it will be fine. Everything goes faster with a faster CPU, whereas little goes faster with a fast GPU. Neither of my parents play anything more intensive than Diablo II or Kyodai Mahjongg. There's no point for them to have an 8800 GT. WoW, one of the biggest games ever, requires slightly more than anything Intel can produce until larabee. I'm sure it will run on anything 500 or greater.

That is in no way a netbook.

k, who said it was/I wanted one?

While somewhat on topic, in roughly eight months I'll be searching for a college laptop. I'll have a budget of $2000, and I'll probably be looking for ~13" for the portability along with the graphics to at the very least run WoW on medium, and hopefully SCII on minimal graphics. I'm looking at custom-builtones, and the best I've found so far (13" laptops that actually have decent graphics thingimagigs, not a lot of those) are the 13" Sager and the 13.3" Sony Vaio. Toshiba's builds are cheaper than those I made with Sony, but the maximum bar is set at lower and it looks a lot less shiny, and I'm currently leaning towar the Sager (price + shiny). I won't be buying yet and will probably post about this again, but are there any other places where I could look? I checked most major producers, so mostly looking for smaller companies, and I haven't seen anything on newegg that fits my requirements.

Seriously I don't know why anyone would spend more than a thousand on a laptop (and that's pushing it to me!) My ex's first computer was 2.5k. He got it from newegg. Small companies buy from newegg. My current bf used to work for one. So really, if you wanted a custom built laptop, you'd be charged a mark up on the parts and labor. See if you can find a place that'll just to labor if you provide the parts. You might save some money.

Oh, and to edit...this is my laptop: http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-5516-5063-15-6-Inch-Laptop/dp/B002AULXNQ

Its really nice for school, because it has a full sized number pad on the keyboard. And as I just found out, I have to take a whole bunch of bullshit finance courses for my major. So I'm set!

shiny=bad. It shows wear and tear. That's one reason thinkpads are so awesome.

Your choice in screen size is top notch, 13" is perfect in terms of portability. You may end up wanting a larger monitor later to hook up to, but probably not. In terms of your time: 8 months is a long time. You definitely can't start looking for one now, but what you can do is learn what you want. Go to stores and try them out. See which ones you like. I highly recommend you stop this senseless smaller companies bit, since you should always buy for price/performance.

In terms of graphics, you can pretty much already make some decisions. Intel graphics are generally bad, but I think you might be able to get away with X3100 GMA or better. X4500 would be fine. ATi and nVidia graphics can be anything over 500 series (8500+, 9500+, X500+, X1500+, etc...). I don't follow nVidia's new line of crap, since it's so different.

$2000 is a lot. You'd do better to make a desktop+cheap laptop if that's your absolute limit/minimum.
I spent $1800 on my first laptop four years ago (single core celeron, whatever came after northwood). The prices of laptops have decreased dramatically.

You bought an Acer.

I think it's important to get a higher quality brand if you want it to last past a year.

Samsung, Lenovo (formerly IBM) and Asus are three good quality brands that won't break the bank. Avoid Acer, Medion, Advent and to an extent MSI. You get what you pay for.

Tips:
1. Never get a laptop with an AMD processor as you may as well just light a fire in your lap.
2. For 'light' gaming the latest Intel integrated solutions should be fine. (4500MHD?) I think they can just about manage HL2, but I don't use laptops for much 3D gaming anyhow.
3. Pentium DualCore isn't that much slower than Core2Duo - same architecture, same 45nm process, just a smaller FSB speed and cache (I think). However it is a fair bit cheaper.

Can't really link you anything because I'm working with UK prices.

It was on sale, and a necessity for class. I didn't have a choice. I'm starting to like this laptop a lot.

Sweet, that laptop Ex recommended went down $50 today to $599. Buying it on the 11th.

lol, another thing put off. However, I am actually ordering within 12 hours now. I was just looking to see if there were any better deals and came across this http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152131 but I'm not sure if it actually is better or if something else is. Some last-minute insight would be good. Thanks.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152129 is still better, that one costs 50$ more and just has a bigger screen, which further ruins the portability of it.

So I ordered it