best affordable laptop?

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can anyone recommend one or which one do you have, I am getting one for school, I am looking around trying to compare them right now, I thought about getting one on overstock.com or somewhere like that, I am going to start a computer tech program in the fall so I need to make sure to get enough memory to download the software for all the classes. I had thought about spending about $400 on just a basic one as long as the memory is enough but it looks like I might have to spend more than that. Not really sure at this point, any recommendations?

Get a Dell Latitude D410 from eBay. They go from $150-300. These are refurbished units from 2005. It's good for homework, surfing; has 1gb of ram which is more than enough for something running on XP. No optical drive though and only 40 GB hard drive. Very durable construction because it was intended for professionals and not just casual users. I like the 4:3 screen aspect. It saves as much space as a netbook but with the ease-of-use of a full-size laptop.

thanks for the info, I have a chance to get a dell through my mom's work which may mean getting a better deal than I would retail. I have to have a DVD/CD drive and I am trying to get one with +/- RW whatever that means so I can run all the software we are doubtless going to have to install for each class, I am worried about memory for that reason too so I am going to try to get as much memory as I can.

I'd recomend dell as well. Just about any machine they sell now that has an optical drive will burn DVDs, so I wouldnt worry about that too much. Since they offer alot of customizable options, look through what they offer and choose the model with the best price/performance ratio you can find.

One tip I'll give you, sometimes they have the same model listed at different price points on different configurations. Go for the most expensive one you can and customize it from there, because often you can get the exact same configuration for much cheaper that way, or get more options open to you.

thanks! I found a good article on overstock.com about what to look for so I am slowly going through all the ones I can find online and looking over all the different criteria. I am most concerned about memory and processing speed but it has to have that Cd/ DVD +/- rw thing because all these books I have to buy for school end up having software and sometimes it's CD and sometimes it's DVD. I am pretty much going cross-eyed looking at them all.