I tend to shun the "name" stuff and opt for something that has a name, but not one of the big three. I have used Compaq and Dell notebooks over the years, but didn't see where they performed any better than the Acer or my latest Fujitsu. The Acers were good machines and served me well with few problems. I bought this Fujitsu a year or so ago because I wanted the larger screen and the larger keys. It came with 4 usb ports, 2 pcmcia, 40 gig hard drive, 512 ram, 1 GHz Celeron, built in modem and network card, etc. I got it at Best Buy for 1500.00 with 12 months to pay, no interest. I think they call that free money!<g>

John