Ah, thanks Sean. The AMD is not dual core. Greg will be happy. The dual core is also not pink. (Trying to find a budget laptop I can use in the backyard with the kids this summer that he can also take for the now-and-again meeting use.)

I keep thinking I have it narrowed down, and then something else comes up. Toshiba, Dell, Sony Vaio, or Lenovo? Dell comes with 3 and 4 GB ram. The others come with 2, but I could add more myself.

I have issues with Dell, but admittedly most of them come from the fact that Dell machines suck ass when it comes to working well with audio equipment and professional audio software.

Yeah, memory is so affordable these days that it's not really a consideration. I got 2GB of RAM for like $30 with a rebate. It's ridiculous.

Thanks ND. I don't work with audio right now, would probably farm that out to my son and his friends who are very much into it. Whenever I hear something like that, though, I always wonder what else on a machine sucks.

ETA: Thanks Dana, I didn't realize it was that cheap. Makes it possible to look at the 1GB machines... oh joy, more choices!

If you want to look at memory prices for a specific model, there's a good memory advisor here: [link]

Thank you!

I don't work with audio right now, would probably farm that out to my son and his friends who are very much into it. Whenever I hear something like that, though, I always wonder what else on a machine sucks.

To be fair to Dell, the pro audio equipment that ND is talking about tends to be fussy about the hardware it will play nice with. The stuff your son would do, I'm guessing, will work just fine with most any machine.

Actually Dells are ass on tons of audio gear, even the cheap M-Audio stuff is bad for not working right and I've had nightmares with audio hum on the built in headphone port on Dell laptops. They go cheap on their grounding so quite often the only way to get the audio out to be quiet is to disconnect the power cord and run the laptop off batteries.

Overall I'm just not impressed with their stuff.

I defer to your expertise and stand corrected!