I'm on my second Toshiba and am pleased with it.

I am very happy with my Toshibas. The big laptop I bought in 2007 as a desktop replacement and the small laptop I bought in 2010 for travel are both going strong.

Whatever you get, I recommend Windows 8 only if the machine has a touch screen.

I fear it will be hard to avoid Windows 8 on a new machine.

I'm in the same boat as Sue and I'm curious about memory. My needs are pretty much exactly as Sue described (surfing, email, word processing, limited gaming [nothing fancier than Candy Crush or Plants v Zombies], some TV/movie watching). How much memory is, "it'll run fine", how much is "that'll be awesome for your needs", and how much is "you REALLY don't need that much, save the $200-300 difference"?

I'd go with 4GB is fine, 8GB is more than you'll need for what you listed.

What about hard drives? I'm assuming that either the 500GB or 750GB that I'm mostly seeing are probably sufficient to my needs, and 1TB would be overkill (no matter how awesome it sounds conceptually)?

If you need extra space later, you can always get an external hard drive. Unless you're storing a lot of digital video, you don't need tons of space.

It's pretty hard to find a computer with Windows 7 in stores, you'd have to order one.

I have Windows 8.1 on my desktop computer (came with Windows 8 and I did the upgrade) and I don't mind. It starts on the desktop, the power button isn't 4 clicks away (or whatever it was) and it's different and if I had a touch screen I could use more of what Windows 8 is about but it's not bad.

I don't know about other retailers but the store I work at the minimum RAM is 4 gb and 500 GB is the minimum harddrive. The differences come in the processors, if it's a touchscreen, and if it's a 2 in 1 where it flips. That is becoming more and more common.

Also a lot of laptops don't have disc drives any more. I don't know how that is an issue, you can always get an external drive but if you use one everyday then a built in drive is better.

Whatever you get, I recommend Windows 8 only if the machine has a touch screen.

I no longer agree with this. Pay $8 to install Metromix and Start8 if you really don't like the start screen (I like it even on my desktop, actually, but use both). There are enough under-the-hood improvements in Windows 8.1 that it is a solid upgrade over Windows 7.

Question that I should probably know the answer to: I need to free up hard drive space, so I want to take a bunch of iTunes TV shows off my computer and put them on an external drive. Will they still play?

Bear in mind I know nothing about creating a media server or whatnot. What I'm envisioning is literally just copying the .m4v files onto an external drive, like you would with Word docs or .jpgs or whatever.

So, if I put them on an external drive but don't create a media server (I have no idea how to even do that), but want to play the shows, will they still play?

(Thank you in advance for not mocking my techno-ignorance on this matter.)